We have all the talents– from sports, music, arts, performing arts and math. But the Philippines ranked second to the lowest in its ability to attract and retain skilled workforce based on the global talent index done by the Institute for Management Development (IMD) World Competitiveness Center.
Business World ran a story of the IMD's World Talent Ranking 2024, where the Philippines slipped three spots to 63rd out of 67 countries, from 60th out of 64 economies last year. This is by far the country's worst ranking since 2005.
The Philippines’ talent competitiveness continued to fall behind Asia-Pacific neighbors. It ranked 13th out of 14 Asia-Pacific countries, better only than Mongolia.
Singapore was the highest-ranking economy in the Asia-Pacific, as it finished second overall. It was followed by Hong Kong (9th), Australia (14th), Taiwan (18th), South Korea (26th), Malaysia (33rd), China (38th), New Zealand (39th), Japan (43rd), Indonesia (46th) and Thailand (47th), and India (58th).
The talent index was again dominated by European economies led by Switzerland (1st overall), Luxembourg (3rd), Sweden (4th), and Denmark (5th).
The WTR rankings are based on three factors: “appeal,” or the extent to which an economy attracts foreign talent and retains local talent; “investment and development,”-- the measurement of resources allotted to develop a homegrown workforce; and “readiness,” or the quality of the skills in a country’s talent pool.
José Caballero, senior economist at IMD World Competitiveness Center, told the newspaper that the drop in the Philippines’ talent ranking was due to the decline in the investment and development and readiness factors.
“At the indicator level, the main aspect affecting its performance in investment and development is the inadequate implementation of apprenticeship programs and the limited prioritization of employee training by the private sector,” he said.
The Philippines had the lowest ranking in investment and development, falling to 64th this year from 62nd last year. This was due to a significant drop in the ranking for apprenticeships and employee training.
The Philippines also ranked among the lowest in terms of public expenditure on education per student (63rd) and pupil-teacher ratio for primary (60th) and secondary (63rd) education.
In terms of readiness, the country slipped a spot to 52nd place as Caballero noted a general decline in all measures of the impact of the country’s talent development efforts. “There is also a decline in the prioritization of talent attraction and retention among companies (57th) and workers’ motivation (47th), which feed into brain drain (54th). The latter is one of the key drivers of talent readiness.”
The low scores of 15-year Filipino students in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) are one of the Philippines’ top weaknesses. Filipino students were among the world’s weakest in math, reading and science, according to the 2022 PISA.
The Philippines ranked 77th out of 81 countries and performed worse than the global average in all categories.
Caballero said that the country’s low investment in education and the quality of the system are fundamental to understanding why it is lagging behind its regional counterparts.
In terms of appeal. the Philippines went up a notch to 54th spot, as it performed well in terms of cost-of-living (20th) and collected personal income tax (20th)but in quality of life, where it ranked low at 57th.
“The Philippines’ appeal is also a factor. Although it has a relatively strong cost of living, its quality of life is lacking, along with its performance in institutional strength, which are crucial for attracting highly qualified talent,” Caballero added.
To improve, he said that the country must revisit its overall talent development strategy, which will help streamline its investment in the education sector.
“This should be a carefully- considered strategy, not a matter of just increasing expenditure, but one that aligns investment with the outcome of the system, that is, the skills and competencies that the Philippines’ economy needs to perform efficiently,” he added.
IBON Foundation executive director Jose Enrique “Sonny” A. Africa said that the country lags in talent competitiveness due to its failure to prioritize education and public health.
“Asia-Pacific countries like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand have done better because they have focused on building comprehensive education systems, investing in public health, and different levels of national industrial policy,” Africa said.
“In contrast, the Philippines continues to struggle with reckless liberalization, underfunded institutions, and shortsighted economic strategies,” he added.
Africa said the government can achieve immediate gains by investing more in education, health, and social protection, which will ensure a more capable and productive workforce.
“The government can build more and better public educational infrastructure, ensure universal access to quality education, and improve vocational and technical training,” he said.
Assistant Prof. Benjamin B. Velasco of the School of Labor and Industrial Relations at the University of the Philippines Diliman, said he is not surprised that the country ranks very low in the talent index.
“Many of the indicators for talent are dependent on education such as the program for PISA rankings, student-teacher ratios, and the budget for education,” Velasco said.
“In this objective set of indicators, we do not do well. Our education system is in crisis,” he added.
Velasco said the country must increase its budget for public education to improve its education system, increase the pay to attract talent to the teaching profession, and provide books, gadgets, and classrooms.
“The private sector should pay more, not less, taxes to increase public revenues. These are hardly original ideas. Many have said this before. It is not that our public officials do not have talent. But they lack the will to just do it. They seem busy in their games of thrones,” he added.
Executive Director Paolo S. Francisco of the Asian Institute of Management Rizalino S. Navarro Policy Center for Competitiveness, said the Philippines lags behind its peers because of low public expenditure on education as a percentage to gross domestic product and on a per student level.
“Our relatively weaker investment in human capital development has negative implications for the future readiness of our workforce. Further complicating this challenge is the fact that we continue to lose globally competitive talent to more ‘appealing’ countries,” Francisco said.
“This is disappointing because while one of the few bright areas cited by respondents to the executive opinion survey is still the availability of skilled labor in the Philippines, insufficient investment in education and workforce development undermines the readiness of our future workforce and therefore the productivity and overall competitiveness of our economy in the future,” he added.
Moving forward, the country must significantly improve the quality of education to see better results.
“The future workforce will need to learn how to work with advanced digital technologies to remain competitive,” he said.
Being a largely service-sector-driven and labor-abundant economy, we need to invest in equipping our current workforce and preparing our future workforce for this type of human-machine collaboration to leverage on the much-needed potential productivity gains,” he added.
My take
I agree with all the points raised here. We have long neglected our public education system, our teachers and non-teaching staff– whom we have long looked at as our slaved during election; our schoolbuildings and the quality of curriculum and the quality of teachers. We have not been lacking in testing. What we have been lacking through the years is investments for the sector and ensuring a good learning environment for our children.
It pains me that we excel in international competitions– but the entrants we provide in these competitions are among the best and we can only count them with our fingers. But the vast majority of our students do not even get the teaching quality they need to learn and excel in. Most of our educational investments in the past have been in substandard books, teaching paraphernalia and our efforts to digitize the learning field are also poorly thought of and the winning suppliers of computers and other gadgets are usually the lowest bidders and oftentimes with the most substandard tools.
Politics has often marred improvements in the public education system. So unless we remove politics from the equation, we can't expect any better rankings for the Philippines in the future.
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