A study by JobStreet.com shows that about 17 percent of its Filipino respondents were retrenched while 43 percent were temporarily unable to work amid the health crisis.
“The hardest hit in terms of retrenchment would be the employees of SMEs, the industries of tourism, food and beverage, hospitality/catering, construction and education. Most of these industries are employing people from 18 to 24 years old, and they are located mostly in NCR [National Capital Region] and Central Luzon,” JobStreet country manager Philip Gioca said in a virtual press briefing Wednesday.
Most employees who were retrenched were not working full time and had been in organizations with less than 500 employees, the study said.
About 76 percent of the respondents said they were not working full-time and, 79 percent were on a six-month contract. About 74 percent of the respondents said they were receiving less than P20,000 in monthly salary.
The study also found out that 60 percent or more than half of jobseekers were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Organizations operating for 10 years were most likely to be negatively affected by COVID-19 in terms of employee headcount, while small companies tended to sustain the impact on staff remuneration, it said.
The Jobstreet study said as the health crisis gave rise to work-from-home set-up, it brought with it a harsh impact on key aspects of work, such as remuneration, role progression and work leaves.
About 87 percent of employees complained of reduced or eliminated bonuses, suspended or cancelled salary increase and frozen or reduced take-home pay. Promotions were also withheld.
It said that on the side of employers, 74 percent of respondents adopted the WFH set-up while 12 percent temporarily laid-off staff. About 49 percent also reduced or froze hiring.
Thirty-percent of the companies decided to suspend salary increases and 15 percent either halted or reduced bonus payments.
For those who found their salaries reduced, more than half experienced a reduction of more than 30 percent. More than 1 out of 5 experienced halved or more than 50-percent salary cut.
Gioca said that the magnitude of unemployed people would likely balloon further if the crisis continued.
“This is where the government comes in to give opportunities to Filipinos to land jobs in these critical times. The government will be opening up 30,000 new positions on top of the 10,000 available jobs on the online platform,” he said.
JobStreet in partnership with the Civil Service Commission will organize the first virtual job fair on Sept. 14 to 18, 2020.
