Introduction

The employability of nursing graduates is now an essential concern as a competition for

students, both local and overseas. The employment situation remains particularly challenging for
all kinds of profession. As we leave the age of production and enter the age of knowledge, new
careers are likely to develop, different skills will be needed, and certain industries will grow
while others fade. New nursing graduates are in transition phase in their careers. One of the
important and challenging issues many nursing students are facing today is the rapidly changing
world of work. Trends in labour market should be paid close attention (Commission on Higher
Education, 2012).
A good job and a better future are the most desirable outcomes of education.
Internationally, there has been a substantial research focusing on enhancing the capability of
nursing students to meet the demand of the new workplace environment. One obvious and
popular approach has been to develop lists of skills deemed desirable by employers. Many
universities have built and attempted to assess lists of skills graduate attributes that nursing
students purportedly need to develop to be employable after graduation (Tran, 2014).
Back in the year 2013 there was an estimated 500,000 employed Filipino nurses. About
90,000 are working abroad and 166,000 are working in the country. The remaining 244,000
nurses were unemployed (Alliance of Young Nurse Leaders & Advocates International, 2013).
Accordingly, the lack of practicing nurses can be attributed to the lack of hospitals being
constructed for the public. It is but natural for the nurse to look for jobs abroad or be
underemployed in the Philippines (Chan,2013).

Graduate tracer studies are important as a way of understanding the relevance and quality
of programs offered by the universities as well as the labor market. There is a demand for
empirical evidence regarding the professional relevance of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs)
study programs using graduate tracer studies. HEIs require graduate tracer studies for
accreditation of study programmes. HEIs must be interested in feedback from their graduates on
the quality of education (Obando & Shisanya,2013).
Based on the 2013 statistics of employed and unemployed Filipino nurses, there was a
large number of licensed nurses who were unemployed. The researchers were concerned if after
graduating they would be able to have jobs as nurses. For this reason, the researchers wanted to
find out the current work status of nursing graduates and their employment data, whether they
were able to find jobs related to their course or in some other fields.