At the recently concluded 2025 International Monetary Fund and World Bank annual meetings, I was struck by the plenary speech of World Bank Group president Ajay Banga, which unfortunately was not appreciated here by most local media as our focus in the past few weeks has been on the legislative and infrastructure corruption issue.
However, I felt the need to bring attention to what Banga said, especially his view on the need to focus on creating the conditions for opportunity and stability, alongside rebuilding from the damages caused by war in conflict areas.
According to Banga, ‘We are living through one of the great demographic shifts in human history. By 2050, more than 85 percent of the world’s population will live in countries we call ‘developing’ today.
‘In just the next 10 to 15 years, 1.2 billion young people will enter the workforce – vying for roughly 400 million jobs. That leaves a very large gap.’
He cited that around ‘four young people will step into the global workforce every second over the next 10 years. So in the time it takes to deliver these remarks, tens of thousands will cross that threshold – full of ambition, impatient for opportunity.’
The pace of population growth, Banga said, is most staggering in Africa, which will be home to one in four people by 2050.
‘Between now and then estimates suggest: These young people – with their energy and ideas – will define the next century.
‘With the right investments – focused not on need, but opportunity – we can unlock a powerful engine of global growth.’
However, the WB president warned, ‘Without purposeful effort, their optimism risks turning into despair – fueling instability, unrest and mass migration – with implications for every region and every economy.
‘This is why jobs must be at the center of any development, economic, or national security strategy.’
He continued, ‘But what do we mean by a job? It can mean working for a company and advancing through it to higher levels, or being employed at a small business. But it could also mean starting your own as an entrepreneur.
‘A job is more than a paycheck. It is what allows both women and men to pursue their aspirations. It’s purpose. It’s dignity. The anchor that holds families steady and the glue that keeps societies together.
‘It is the straightest line to stability – and the hardest progress to reverse once achieved.’
And that is exactly what our government officials here should likewise focus on – creating more jobs for our young, educated and eager Filipinos to stay in the country and work together to bring the Philippines to a higher level of economic growth.
Our employment statistics as of June showed a relatively high employment rate of 96.3 percent, an unemployment rate of just 3.7 percent and an underemployment rate of 11.4 percent.
Appears good, right? But a deeper dive on the employment statistics indicates that the jobs generated are in the services sector, accounting for 61.4 percent.
The agriculture sector, which includes our farmers and fisher folks and feeds our population of almost 117 million, provides employment for just 20.9 percent of our working population, while the industry sector accounts for just 17.7 percent.
Why am I not impressed with the employment statistics? Because as we all are aware, most of our college educated professionals are seeking employment abroad and it is their remittances that are helping prop up our economy.
But as WB president Banga pointed out, the global youth statistics show that more and more young people globally are joining the workforce and competing for the best jobs available in the global market.
With more Filipinos seeking white collar jobs, our agriculture sector which should be an income earner, continues to languish because our farmers and fisherfolks are aging and their children do not want to work in the agriculture sector, thus forcing the government to rely on imports.
Not being able to capitalize on own agriculture sector to provide us with our own basic staples and provide us with potential export income is already a big economic mistake, and yet our government wants to convince us that importations are still the best way to provide us what we need, instead of concentrating on increasing our own agricultural production.
What worries me, and is overshadowed by politics and corruption issues, is the continuing decline in the quality of education in our country. Even in our important agriculture sector, there is hardly any interest from young Filipinos to study any agriculture related courses that could benefit the sector.
The rankings of our educational institutions in international education surveys show an alarming deterioration.
Even for our own high-tech requirements, I have noticed that more and more foreign Information Technology guys are being hired.
As I recently wrote, even the entry-level IT and business process outsourcing jobs are being reduced as Artificial Intelligence (AI) takes over the more basic BPO requirements.
Upskilling is the new battlecry, but again education is the problem, and the current education secretary is in the midst of a political storm that is also caught up in the corruption controversy.
Likewise, I’ve noticed that our young workforce survive on gig jobs that may initially appear lucrative, but does not really provide the social safety nets that they will have to rely on as they grow old.
Moving from one lucrative gig job to another may bring in the cash, but most of the young workers I’ve had the opportunity to talk and interact with have no concern about their future medical needs, simply because they are young and do not face any medical attention so far.
But as my fellow columnists Boo Chanco and Cito Beltran have written in their own columns, the medical cost as one ages becomes a terrible burden because the government, once again, has failed us in providing that social safety net.