Study: PH youth least satisfied with job security
More than four in five Filipino youth have a positive outlook for the next five years, according to a new collaborative study by Vero Advocacy, a government relations arm, and Kadence International, a global market research agency.
However, this optimism is tempered by a strong demand for urgent reforms in employment, education, and health care.
The study surveyed over 2,700 Gen Z-ers and millennials across six Southeast Asian countries, including 453 respondents from the Philippines.
According to the survey, 43 percent of Gen Z Filipinos expect a “much better” future, and 42 percent anticipate a “better” life in the next five years—only slightly higher than the combined optimism rate of millennial Filipinos, which stands at 84 percent.
Overall, Filipino youth are more optimistic than their peers in Singapore (69 percent) and Malaysia (77 percent), with similar levels of hope for the future as young people in Indonesia (89 percent), Vietnam (89 percent), and Thailand (87 percent).
Both Gen Z-ers and millennials in the Philippines, however, identified employment opportunities, quality education, and accessible healthcare as their top challenges. Though these issues are prevalent across the surveyed markets, satisfaction rates for these three areas of concern were the lowest among Filipino respondents. Other concerns include environmental protection, affordable housing, and effective taxation and resource management.
Job insecurity
Many young Filipinos feel uncertain about their professional futures, with 35 percent of Gen Z-ers and millennial respondents expressing a dissatisfaction over job security. Filipino youth were the least satisfied with job security among the six countries surveyed, with a 29 percent satisfaction rate that lags far behind the second lowest satisfaction rate of 43 percent for Malaysia.
Thirty-one percent of Gen Z Filipinos and 36 percent of millennial Filipinos ranked employment opportunities as the top challenge they face, with most citing a lack of jobs as a key issue.
Filipinos are also the least satisfied with the cost of education in the region, with a satisfaction rate of 43 percent for Gen Z-ers and 38 percent for millennials.
Most respondents cited high costs as the main impediment to accessing quality education in the country.
Thirty-one percent of Gen Z-ers and 30 percent of millennial Filipinos also cite the quality of education as the top challenge faced by the country.
Despite healthcare being a constitutional right, six out of 10 Filipinos die without seeing a doctor, according to statistics from the Department of Health. Access to healthcare remains elusive for most Filipinos, with 10 percent of Filipino Gen Z-ers and 14 percent of Filipino millennials citing it as the top challenge faced by the country.
Philippine satisfaction rates for healthcare are the lowest, with only 36 percent of Filipino youth saying they are satisfied with the current healthcare system in the country. Fifty percent indicate that the high costs of healthcare services and treatments are a major challenge to accessing healthcare, while 25 percent point to the limited availability of facilities and equipment.