The country’s unemployment rate rose to 4.8 percent in January, the highest posted in four months, data released by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) showed.
According to the PSA’s latest labor force survey, the jobless rate is the worst recorded since September 2022’s 5 percent.
This translates to 2.37 million unemployed for the month.
Michael Ricafort, Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. chief economist, said the higher jobless rate came as the seasonal increase in employment and other business activities towards the end of 2022 due to the Christmas holidays tapered off upon crossing the new year.
“Higher unemployment rate also partly attributed to higher inflation that reduce spending (by businesses, consumers, government, and other institutions) and tend to increase poverty rate, higher interest rates that led to higher borrowing costs, and risk of US recession that led to job cuts in the US/globally especially in the tech sector; all of which are drags on the creation of more investments that, in turn, entail the creation of more employment opportunities,” Ricafort said.
He, however, said the unemployment rate is still among the best since the pandemic started or since October 2019, when it posted 4.5 percent, and coming from the low of 4.2 percent in November 2022, the lowest in 17 years or since 2005.
It is also better than January 2022’s jobless rate of 6.4 percent, Ricafort said, as the economy reopened further towards greater normalcy with no more lockdowns so far and going forward as a policy priority.
President Marcos Jr. yesterday said his administration would continue to work harder and strive to do better until poverty in the country is totally addressed, even after the country saw an improved employment rate of 95.2 percent in February from 93.6 percent in January.
“This means 4.1 million Filipinos were added to the labor force,” Marcos said.
During the presidential campaign, he committed to generate more quality jobs for Filipinos under his term.
The National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) said in a statement the government remains steadfast in strengthening its policy interventions geared toward generating more productive and higher-quality employment.
The employment rate accelerated from the previous year’s level to 95.2 percent, which translates to an additional 4.1 million employed persons year-on-year, on account of employment gains in the services and agriculture sectors in January 2023. This brings total employment to 47.4 million from 43.3 million in January 2022.
The employment rate, however, was the lowest recorded since September 2022’s 95 percent.
Correspondingly, the labor force participation rate was recorded at 64.5 percent, equivalent to 49.7 million Filipinos in the labor force.
“The latest employment indicators show the robust recovery and growth of our labor market from its slump in January 2022, when the surge in Omicron cases prompted stringent mobility and capacity restrictions,” NEDA Secretary Arsenio Balisacan said.
“However, we note that employment created year-on-year were mostly part-time and classified as vulnerable. Thus, it is imperative that labor market policies and programs that directly contribute to labor productivity and employment generation must be prioritized, not only to preserve jobs but also to generate quality jobs,” he added.
Meanwhile, the Federation of Free Workers (FFW) yesterday lamented the increasing unemployment and underemployment rates.
“While the increase in unemployment could be partly due to the lack of holiday jobs during the festive season, the rise in underemployment indicates that even those who have jobs are struggling to find sufficient work to make ends meet. This situation is unacceptable and requires urgent action from the government,” said FFW president Sonny Matula.
The FFW called on the government to work for a comprehensive job creation program that will generate decent and stable employment opportunities for Filipinos.
“This includes measures, such as investing in infrastructure projects, supporting small and medium enterprises, and expanding the public sector that could provide more public employment programs,” said Matula.
In addition, they called on the government to allow the increase in the wages of workers.
“The FFW is urging the government to prioritize the needs of workers to increase wages to recover from inflation and adopt non-wage measures to increase their take home pay,” Matula said. – With Jocelyn Montemayor and Gerard Naval.
