"While the Philippines has achieved remarkable progress in raising the education level of its labor force, the standard proxy for educational attainment—years of formal schooling—is increasingly inadequate as a measure of workforce skills. About one-third of employers report being unable to fill vacancies due to lack of applicants with the requisite skills. Most of these “missing skills†? are socioemotional skills,†? also known as “non-cognitive skills†?, “soft skills†? or “behavioral skills.†?
Emerging international evidence suggests that socioemotional skills are increasingly crucial to the types of jobs being created by the global economy.
The following study presents new evidence from employer and household surveys on the role of socioemotional skills in the Philippine labor market. The analysis reveals that:
• Two-thirds of employers report difficulty in finding workers with adequate work ethics or appropriate interpersonal and communications skills. Firm-based training increa
