As the dust settles from the May Day rallies and national celebration of Labor Day a few days ago, there remains the challenge of sustaining government efforts to address unemployment.
Available estimates indicate the country churns out about 500,000 college graduates annually. In 2022, this number swelled to 1.6 million both from public and private universities.
From among the yearly graduates, the lucky ones find employment, while a sizeable portion merely adds to the jobless statistics.
Pre-COVID 19 data revealed that from the new batch of college diploma holders then, almost half a million failed to find immediate employment. That was not surprising, as most of the hardest hit businesses either closed shop or downsized their workforce.
After the pandemic, the numbers began to show a decline in jobless Filipinos.
Unemployment in the country as of December 2024 stabilized at 3.1 percent, the same rate recorded a year earlier, and lower than the 3.2 percent in November 2024.
‘Amid a modernizing global workplace, our local job-seekers are faced with the challenge of competing with a new type of “worker,” powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI).’
Preliminary figures for February 2025 also indicated a continued softening of the jobless rate to 3.8 percent from 4.3 percent in January. The February rate, however, remained slightly higher than the 3.5 percent recorded in February 2024.
As affirmed later by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), the February unemployment rate indeed stood at 3.8 percent, easing from 4.3 percent in January, which translated to only 1.94 million jobless Filipinos, compared with the 2.16 million without jobs in the previous month.
The PSA said the number of employed Filipinos rose in February 2025 to 49.15 million, higher than those with jobs in the same period in 2024, who numbered about 48.95 million. In January 2025, the number of employed Filipinos totaled 48.49 million.
Our available unemployment rate continues to be lower than the 5.2 percent unemployment in China, 5.1 percent in Indonesia and 4.9 percent in India.
To boost employment, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. during the May 1 rites directed the labor department to conduct monthly job fairs to open more employment opportunities for Filipinos.
He also disclosed that since July 2022, more than 4,000 job fairs had been conducted in 69 locations, which benefited over a million Filipinos, including 170,000 who were hired on the spot.
The Marcos government’s campaign to attract investors has resulted in more than $27 billion worth of investment from 2022 to 2024, and generated more than 350,000 jobs nationwide.
Globally, job-seeking Filipinos have an edge over their Southeast Asian counterparts for being highly skilled and English-proficient, thus making the Philippines a popular hunting ground for global headhunters.
Filipinos excel in all spheres of employment–from white collar, high-paying jobs in the financial and IT sectors to blue collar employment in the BPO, tourism and service industries.
Although average salaries in the Philippines are lower than those in Singapore, Japan and South Korea, Filipino wages are still comparable with or higher than the wages in Vietnam and Indonesia.
Amid a modernizing global workplace, our local job-seekers are faced with the challenge of competing with a new type of “worker,” powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI).
To survive in the global tech-savvy working environment, our Filipino job applicants must also upgrade their skills and undergo further training, with help from government training programs, to supplement their diplomas and impressive resumes.
