For a long while, we thought the problem was merely a jobs-skills mismatch.

Don’t look now, but there seems to be a glowing disparity between the government’s employment strategy and actual data on  joblessness and underemployment (people alreadyt on the payroll but still wanting to work some more).

No wonder a great number of households are rating themselves poor  and encountering intermittent bouts of hunger.

Putting employable people on the payroll and keeping them there should be a continuing socio-economic intervention to address squalor and social instability.   

Sen. Ralph G. Recto made the observation, saying there seems to be “a growing disconnect” between the government’s jobs generation plan vis-à-vis the actual number of people out of jobs and those who have found jobs but are hardly surviving from their meager income.

“The country has a growing labor force that has no jobs available for them. There must be general plan to connect the growth in labor to the availability of jobs,” Recto said.

He noted that the country’s labor force grew by 4.8 percent or 1.902 million more from 39.287 million in October 2010 to 41.189 million in the same month in 2011.

But he said as the country’s army of able bodied workers grew, the rate of unemployment likewise remained the highest in the region despite its decline from 7.1 percent in October 2010 to 6.4 percent in October 2011.

In actual terms, the number of underemployed persons increased by 239,000 from 7.141 million in October 2010 to 7.380 million in October 2011.

The Senate ways and means committee chairman also said 50 percent of the unemployed are young people, aged 15-24 years old.

If this is the typical biological profile of the labor pool, the percentage of young jobless but employable people would further balloon as a fresh batch is set to graduate this summer. 

The former socio-economic planning secretary said the number of unemployed is expected to balloon some more from the already 564,000 college graduates still looking for work as of January 2011 and with an estimated avalanche of 700,000 fresh graduates this March that have no clear job prospects.

“We need to know where the government’s job plan is going and let Congress put in the legislative man-hours to craft or amend relevant laws,” he said, adding that government has yet to announce its own jobs target for the next three years.

Recto has a pending bill which grants business owners tax discounts and other regulatory perks in exchange for hiring additional workers.

Through a Senate Resolution, he has called on the Senate through its committees on economic affairs and on labor, employment and human resource development, to look into the job generation program of the government and see if it was producing results.