Noting the country's oversupply of nurses, the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) Tuesday said the demand for nurses been steadily declining over the years. “We have an oversupply of nurses. We've been sending signals that whether locally or overseas, the demand for nurses has declined,” Labor Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz said after the Senate hearing on the DOLE budget. She said it would not be “surprising” if the country's nurses land in jobs which do not need the skills for which they obtained their licenses. “This is the mismatch we've been saying,” she said. She said that based on the government's job portal, the top in demand jobs locally are for call center agents, customer service assistants, accounting clerks, mechanical engineers, sales clerks, drivers, cashiers, production workers, technical support staff, and forklift operators for the skilled workers. But Baldoz said they also aim to increase the skills of Filipino workers based on the jobs that would be generated by President Benigno Aquino III's meetings with political, business, and civil society leaders during his week-long US visit. “We have to prepare the skills registry and also the competencies for each skill,” she said.
