Parallel Universe: Philippine Online Job Openings Collapse as Government Declares Record High Employment Rates!

The Philippine government tell us that for 2015, employment rate has surged to 93.7% or that unemployment rate has dropped to 6.3%.

The government tell us too that in 4Q 2015 employment rate was at 94.4% an all-time high! Unemployment rate as of October 2015 dropped to 5.7% which also represents a record low milestone!

These survey numbers contradict real events.

Why?  

 

Because online job postings have been crashing in 2015 relative to 2014!

According to online job agency, Monster.com, "The Monster Employment Index Philippines registered a -46% year-on-year decline in online recruitment activities between November 2014 and November 2015." (bold added)

It’s not just November though, with the exception of December which has yet to be posted, the entire 2015 have shown jobs growth numbers and levels significantly well below the 2014!

And it is NOT just Monster, two other employment indices which I monitor have been exhibiting Monster’s dilemma.

Firm A, one of the top online job sites, which used to owned by one of the largest publicly listed holding company, has exhibited a 35% collapse in online job postings from a week ago since May, when I began tabulating their numbers!

Firm A’s September bounce, echoes with Monster’s data. And so with the November thud!

Firm B hasn’t been as lucky as Firm A. 

Firm B’s job opening numbers has virtually evaporated! Since April, Firm B’s online jobs have crumbled by a shocking 80% as of a week ago! Competition and the overall low job postings, perhaps led to the erosion of its market share.

While employment data is nuanced than job openings, job openings give us an insight on the conditions of job markets. Job openings provide a clue of the hiring process and employment conditions.

I have previously wrote about such divergence:

Perhaps employers have resorted to the traditional medium of newspaper based advertisement, which should be more costly, and more inefficient in drawing audiences or candidate employees.

Or perhaps employers have resorted to direct hiring via viral networking, without media advertisements.

Or perhaps job openings have really been dwindling.

Nonetheless based on online job openings the government’s statistical numbers have been unsubstantiated.

This simply tells us that the government’s numbers may be about statistical Sadakos. Or that their numbers that just popped out of the computer screens to generate a showbiz statistical talisman impact.

Yet Monster’s November job opening collapse was broad based! The decline included the top growth industries…yes, mainstream's favorite BPOs too (down by double digit)!

As in June’s data where Monster.com tries to spin the bad developments, as noted here:

Online jobs continue to nosedive. Monster.com’s June data reveals that online hiring plunged 32% year on year. Yet they call this “a significant improvement in growth from -43% in May 2015”. Huh? 

Officers from monster.com must have been scathingly pilloried by the throng of believers who think that the Philippines have reached a developed economy status to force the latter to utter such balderdash.

Monster officials say that current job collapse has “Partly due to the halting investments ahead of the elections and the dry spells of the El Nino, hiring has also begin to slow down”.

But they remain optimistic. They noted that job openings “will likely see a rebound in 2016, given the country’s strong private consumption as well as higher government spending in order to drive growth in the country”

If there has indeed been “strong private consumption” then why would election or political uncertainty serve as a roadblock for investments?

Have the business community become so fearful of the change in administration for them not to take advantage of opportunities from the meme of “strong private consumption”? Or why has the business community become (in aggregate) suddenly blind or dense to profit opportunities?

Yet the BSP tells us of a starkly different story: the business community have supposedly been more upbeat in Q3 and Q4. If so, why the lack of investments? Who has been telling the truth or who has been lying?

Second, how has the dry spells of the El Nino affected investments or job openings? Agriculture accounted for just 8.57% share of 3Q constant based GDP, whereas the Service sector had the largest share at 59.01%. Has there not been a consumer boom to offset dislocations from the weather? 

And if Monster’s numbers accurately reflect on economic activities, then why the slump in ALL sectors?

As for government spending, hasn’t there been a boom in government spending? 

Growth in government spending numbers has reportedly accelerated 19.3% in 3Q relative to 12.4% in 2Q and 4.5% in 1H. Yet where are the jobs? Why has the surge in government spending coincided with a collapse in the job opening markets? Even if we see things in terms of a time lag, the 2Q government spending activities should have at least buoyed job opening numbers. So why the vacuum? 

Could it be because job growth has emerged only in firms of crony enterprises benefiting from government spending projects in the exclusion of the rest?

Yes the government's record low unemployment and all time high employment rates paradoxically comes in the face of slowing statistical GDP, manufacturing and export recession, “halting of investments” and collapsing online job postings. That's government's economic logic for you: Low is high, down is up, few is many.

And you see, where (the phony) boom has been seen by the public or impressed upon the public as a politically correct theme, any negatives has to be denied, censored or rationalized by the mainstream's spin doctors.

At the end of the day, panics are created by reality overwhelming embedded or entrenched misimpressions, misperceptions and deceptions.