JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

There’s an article about Overseas Foreign Workers and the Philippine economy in the February 2011 issue of Monocle. Lots of pictures, and it presents the Filipino worker’s skills in a good light.

Since the 1970s, the Philippine government has offered training to Filipinos wanting to work on oil tankers belonging to Danes and Norwegians, construction sites in Osaka and in private homes stretching from Beirut to Bologna, actively encouraging them to look for jobs outside the country rather than join the ranks of the 2.7 million unemployed or the 22 per cent of the population who are living on just over $1 a day.

Today, one in nine Filipinos works abroad, where they can earn salaries five or six times higher than they can at home. During 2010 alone, 53,532 people left the Philippines while those nine million already settled across 80 countries sent €17bn home to their relatives. Only India, China and Mexico receive more remittances than the Philippines. At 12 per cent of GDP, it is a source of income the government is more than happy to see coming in.