Emerging Jobs See the Need for Expanded IT Skills
In the April 2020 report by the Philippine Statistics Authority, unemployment report rose to 17.7% accounting for the 7.3 million Filipinos in the labor workforce. The COVID-19 pandemic affected 3,000 businesses with 200 of them closed down permanently since January affecting 100,000 workers, according to the Philippine Department of Labor and Employment.
Looking ahead, post-pandemic or when people learn to live with a highly contagious virus, new jobs emerge as a direct result of companies adopting digitalization or digital transformation.
As many businesses choose to adopt remote work, technology-related jobs are expected to increase in the coming months.
In a report by industry analyst firm Gartner, a massive reset will happen, if it is still not happening, post-COVID-19 and most of it have something to do with technology or the use of IT. The economic impact of the pandemic forced employers to let go of their full-time employees to save costs in terms of benefits and other overhead expenses. But to ensure business continuity, companies will expand the "contingency workforce" or in the Philippine context, contractual workers. In the research, Gartner said, "32% of organizations are replacing full-time employees with contingent workers as a cost-saving measure."
Professional networking site LinkedIn listed the job trends in the Philippines in its report "2020 Emerging Jobs Report Philippines".
Robotics Engineer
Cybersecurity Specialist
Customer Success Specialist
Data Scientist
Sales Development Representative
Full Stack Engineer
DevOps Engineer
Data Engineer
JavaScript Developer
Cloud Engineer
The Emerging Jobs analysis is done on all LinkedIn members with a public profile that has held a full-time position within the Philippines during the past five years. The pivot toward digitalization greatly impacts the skills and jobs organizations would need in the near future. LinkedIn noted, though, that these are not "new jobs" but jobs that have minimal use until recently.
Even before the pandemic, the Philippines has been embracing e-commerce and the digital economy is expected to be worth $25 billion in 2024, according to the “e-Conomy SEA 2019” report by Google, Temasek, and Bain & Company.
Now that COVID-19 happened, there is a greater need for consumers to go online not only for e-commerce but for other tasks as well including banking, bills payments, and communications. It means that the IT infrastructure will also expand the need and reach to accommodate more organizations and businesses in their shift to the digital platform.
Filipinos are encouraged to upskill to be relevant to employers and the market. There is also a push for developing soft skills especially decision-makers because it is crucial during these uncertain times.
Relevant government agencies are ramping up their skills training programs that involve courses heavy on technology. Even if automation becomes mainstream in the future, new manual jobs will emerge which makes upskilling even more necessary than before.