Public employment service centers posted more job openings than there were job seekers last year, with each person looking for a job having an average of 1.3 opportunities, the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
The centers posted 1.17 million job openings last year for the 905,000 people who sought work, but the average of 1.3 job opportunities per job seeker was down from the 1.4 average in 2006, DGBAS said.
In a year when the average unemployment rate remained steady at 3.91 percent, the number of jobs posted increased 11.6 percent from the previous year while the number of job seekers rose 18.9 percent.
DGBAS said 202,000 people in the 25 to 29 age bracket sought jobs last year, the most of any age group. Some 172,000 of those looking for jobs were over the age of 45, indicating that a sizable number of people were also looking for a career change.
With regard to education, the number of university graduates or those with advanced degrees seeking jobs totaled 200,000, a 34 percent year-on-year increase, reflecting a growing unemployment problem among the highly educated.
DGBAS said, however, that individuals with higher education tended to demand higher compensation and changed jobs more frequently. Their joblessness tended to be voluntary and short-term, unlike other groups for whom unemployment is more long-term.
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