Trends and patterns of job advertising in Philippine newspapers
Date
1980
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Abstract
This paper, Trends and Patterns of Job Advertising in Philippine Newspapers, is a study on the utilization of job openings advertised in newspapers as a job vacancy measure indicating trends and patterns of unfilled demand for labor and as an information channel entailing search costs to employers.
The focus of the study reveals bias of job advertising for certain occupations and the sources of these bias. It further describes the occupational composition of vacancies advertised in Philippine newspapers, its seasonal variations, trends and patterns in search costs eventually providing insight into the recruitment activity of employers using formal channels.
The primary data sources of this study are all Sunday issues of the Manila Times for the years 1959, 1965 and 1971 and the Bulletin Today for 1977. There has been an increasing preference for Sunday issues in advertising job openings since 1959 as evidenced by the higher price paid per unit of space and greater number of pages purchased since then.
The labor market reviewed pertained only to the Metro Manila area where the rate of newspapers circularized is high. Likewise, job advertising in newspaper is likely to be biased indicator of total job openings because the advertisement represent a biased sample of total job vacancies. This is identified in the study as readership bias. Closely related to readership bias. Closely related to readership bias of job advertisings is the employer's expressed preference for experienced workers.
Another bias affecting the job vacancy measure using advertisements is the wage bias. Teachers for example have low cost offers while other college-trained professions have high ones. The quality bias on the other hand, affects the advertisements for engineers and skilled industrial workers.
As a source of information on job opportunities for wage employment, job advertising more likely reflects employers demand for the educated and skilled workers than for the less educated and unskilled.
Related to being a biased indicator of total job vacancies, job advertising may not likely reflect job applications for the experienced and unskilled but may well be a useful source of information on jobs for the educated, skilled workers, particularly professional, skilled and college-trained workers.
Seasonal patterns of job advertising for certain types of workers were also revealed, and cost trends and patterns of job advertising in newspapers were closely looked into.
This study provided a framework for examining the recruitment activity and identifying certain factors associated with the synthesized utilization of job advertising as vacancy measure and information channel.
Further areas of research were suggested which were not within the scope of the study. These involve the measurement of the importance of job advertising for occupation identified in this study relative to other
information channels; the investigation of pressures or labor shortages relative to job advertising; and the seasonality of other occupations.