A total of 1.03 million female workers joined the labor force in August, helping improve the country’s August unemployment numbers to 4 percent from last year’s 4.4 percent, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).
Claire Dennis Mapa, national statistician, said out of the country’s total female workforce of 2.53 million, 1.085 million worked for more than 40 hours.
“The story basically you have more female workers joining the labor force,” Mapa said.
The PSA in its monthly employment update Tuesday said a total of 49.15 million individuals were employed in August, up from 48.07 million last year, with employment rate at 95.3 percent.
Unemployed individuals hit 2.07 million for an unemployment rate of 4 percent, lower compared to last year’s 2.22 million as well as from last month’s 2.38 million.
Labor force participation was recorded at 64.7 percent of the 51.22 million employable individuals – Filipinos aged 15 years and up – in the country.
On average, employed persons worked 40.7 hours per week, lower than the 40.8 average hours worked in a week in August 2023. Last month’s survey showed that individuals worked an average of 41.1 hours per week.
Employed individuals who expressed the desire to have additional hours of work in their present job or to have additional job, or to have a new job with longer hours of work stood at 5.48 million, pegging the underemployment rate at 11.2 percent, down from 11.7 percent last year.
The services sector continued to employ the most people, with 63.3 percent of the labor pie. The agriculture and industry sectors accounted for 19.3 percent and 17.4 percent of the employed persons, respectively.
About 62.4 percent of the employed labor were wage and salary workers, with self-employed persons without any paid employee accounting for 28.3 percent and unpaid family workers, 6.9 percent. Employers in own family-operated farm or business were at 2.5 percent.
Youth employment rate stood at 88 percent, up from 87.7 percent last year.
Mapa expressed confidence that employment figures will further improve as the holiday season comes to the fore.
“Because of the holidays, release of bonuses, consumption expenditure, we have many jobs created historically. We expect that this will increase further in the last quarter,” he said.
The National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) said Filipinos “are in for a potentially better holiday season as the latest labor force survey showed promising labor market results.”
“Coupled with the country’s four-year-low inflation rate in September 2024 at 1.9 percent, the positive results of our labor force survey can lead us to a more vibrant holiday season,” said Arsenio Balisacan, NEDA secretary.
