But they bear close attention. The numbers suggest the magnitude and complexity of the problem of providing jobs to the country’s growing population and the government’s failure to address it.

The demographic pressure, which the government has not managed, is itself a prominent element in the picture. NSO (National Statistics Office) mid-2007 projection of the country’s population in 2008 was 90.4 million, an increase of 1.8 million (2.03 percent) from the 2007 count of 88.6 million. The pool of people considered employable, the population at age15 and over, increased by 1.3 million.

How many of these employables — 56.1 million in2007 and 57.4 million in 2008 — will actively look for work, depends in part on their perception of the market. The "labor participation rate" was 64.8 percent in 2007 and only 63.4 percent in 2008. Thus, although the labor pool rose by 1.3 million, only about 40,000 warm bodies joined the labor force (from 36.35 million in 2007 to 36.39 million in 2008).

Those who looked for and found work numbered 33.5 million in 2007 and 33.7 million in 2008. Thus, the 200,000 additional jobs for 2008 reached only 20 percent of the 1 million jobs a year promised by Arroyo numbered only 200,000. Two points also bear recalling: The government survey would count as employed anyone who had worked at least one hour within the week of the interview; and nearly half (48.3 percent) of the 33.7 million "employed" in 2008 were either unpaid family workers or were selfemployed.

The official, 2008 "employment rate" of 92.6 percent may be statistically accurate, based on government definitions; it is totally meaningless to people looking for livelihood. It suggests that almost everyone who wants to work can get a job that will earn an adequate living wage. In reality, too many people are competing for fewer, stable, fulltime jobs, and many jobs pay poorly or do not pay at all.

The national profile is bad enough; a look at the youth sector, the 18.2 million in the 15-24 age group, exposes a truly grim picture. After seven years of the Arroyo Administration, the youth find themselves compelled by short-sighted government policies in education, to jump into the job market without marketable skills. Nearly half of them (47 percent) are looking for work, accounting for nearly a fourth (23.4 percent) of the labor pool.

Perhaps, more would be hunting for jobs, if the prospects for finding one were brighter. Of the 8.5 million who have joined the job market, only 6.9 million were able to find employment. The 2008 youth unemployment rate was 19 percent, against 7.4 percent for the entire labor force. The youth make up half of the ranks of the unemployed, nearly two-thirds of whom had failed to complete high school.

In the Knowledge and Information Age, human resource development supposedly holds the key to competitiveness. Even with our 10-year basic education system, the youth between 15 and 17 should still be in high school, not out hustling for work.

A 12-year basic education cycle, would keep the youth in high school until the age of 18. Also, in many of these countries, 20 percent to 50 percent of the youth between 18 and 22 would be attending post-secondary schools, acquiring the skills for life-long learning and life-long earning. We refuse to make the same kind of investment in our youth. We throw our children into an unforgiving labor market for which they are inadequately prepared.

The recitation of NSO numbers, unfortunately, cannot convey the threat and the tragedy confronting us. We speak of the youth as the hope of the motherland; but we do not nurture the young and their hopes. Too many end up jobless or trapped in dead-end jobs, facing, perhaps, 40 years more of life ahead of them.

Thanks to this government, which has been in power for over 7 years, we are sitting on a powder keg waiting to explode.