"The Country That Exported Its People Is Running Out of People."

 "The Country That Exported Its People Is Running Out of People."

by:

Virgilio F. De leon Jr. MD

There have been plenty of experts warning about population decline around the world. Yet many people still believe it could never really happen here in the Philippines.

After all, for decades, our country has been one of the world's biggest exporters of manpower.

Nurses. Seafarers. Engineers. Domestic helpers.

You name the profession, and there is a good chance the Philippines has provided someone to fill it somewhere around the world.

For generations, leaving the country to work abroad was almost a rite of passage.

It was also a great equalizer.

You could leave your family behind, endure the loneliness of being away from home, and hopefully provide them with a better life. The sacrifice was painful, but there was usually a promise attached to it: work hard enough overseas and you could give your family opportunities that might have been difficult to achieve in the Philippines.

But that promise is becoming harder to sustain.

Yes, you can still go abroad and earn more than you probably would at home.

But earning more does not necessarily mean achieving the kind of prosperity that overseas workers enjoyed in previous decades. The cost of living has risen everywhere. Fuel is more expensive. Housing is more expensive. Food is more expensive.

The paycheck may be bigger, but so are the expenses.

And something else is changing.

There is a growing percentage of young Filipinos who may simply not want to follow the traditional path.

Why spend years training to become a nurse, seafarer, engineer, or skilled worker, then leave your family and spend years working abroad when there are now other possibilities?

One viral TikTok video can sometimes bring in an amount of money that would have seemed impossible to earn from a day's work in the traditional economy.

Of course, some people will hit it big.

But most won't.

Virality has a very short attention span. Today's sensation can easily become tomorrow's forgotten account, replaced by the next viral video, the next creator, the next trend.

And yet, the traditional workforce is still here.

The jobs still need to be done.

And increasingly, we may find ourselves facing shortages—not necessarily because there are absolutely no people available, but because there are fewer people willing to take those jobs under the conditions being offered.

At the same time, young families are making different calculations.

Gone, or at least increasingly rare, are the days when having three, four, or even more children was considered normal for a family.

Many families today are choosing to have only one or two children.

It is not difficult to understand why.

The cost of raising a child has become enormous while wages, for many workers, have struggled to keep pace with the rising cost of living.

And so the demographic shift happens quietly.

One family at a time.

One fewer child here.

One delayed marriage there.

One young person deciding that working abroad is no longer worth the sacrifice.

One couple deciding that two children are enough.

Eventually, all those individual decisions become a national trend.

Perhaps that is the strange future we are moving toward: a country that spent decades building an economy around sending its people elsewhere may eventually find itself with fewer people willing to go.

The Philippines has long had an abundant supply of one of its most valuable resources—its people.

But people are not an infinite resource.

And when fewer young people are born, when families become smaller, and when traditional jobs become less attractive, the consequences do not arrive all at once.

They arrive slowly.

First as shortages.

Then as higher costs.

Then as industries struggling to find enough workers.

It is a world where problems abound and solutions often seem temporary.

And perhaps the biggest problem is that demographics do not change as quickly as policies do.

You cannot suddenly create a new generation when you realize you need one.

The country that spent decades sending its people out into the world may eventually have to confront a very different question:

What happens when there simply aren't enough people left to send?