Jobless, underemployment rates drop

MANILA, Philippines–The number of unemployed Filipinos, as well as those who wanted more stable jobs, slid in January as new jobs, mainly in the services sector, almost quadrupled last year.

The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) on Thursday released its Labor Force Survey, which showed that the unemployment rate last January declined to 6.6 percent, from 7.5 percent in the same month last year.

That same month, the underemployment rate dropped to 17.5 percent, from the 19.5 percent reported in January 2013, the survey showed.

The PSA defines the underemployed as those who have expressed the desire to work additional hours in their present job, to have a second job, or to have a new job with longer working hours.

The PSA did not include in the comparative estimates figures from Region 8, or Eastern Visayas, which was the area worst hit by Supertyphoon “Yolanda” in late 2013. The agency said no survey was conducted in the region last year.

In a statement, the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) noted that, as the number of employed Filipino inched up by 2.8 percent to 37.5 million last January, from 36.4 million in the same month last year, the new jobs generated during the one-year period in between reached 1.04 million—nearly four times bigger than the 281,000 jobs created the previous year.

“The labor market got a boost from a stronger growth in all sectors, mainly driven by services, which grew by 3.9 percent, contributing a 766,000 net employment gain in January 2015,” Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Arsenio M. Balisacan said.

“With employment growing faster at 2.8 percent compared to the labor force growth of 1.8 percent, and partly due to the stronger growth of services employment, the number of unemployed went down by 334,000 to 2.6 million during the period,” added Balisacan, who is also Neda’s director-general.

As for the dwindling number of underemployed, which hit 6.5 million last January from 7.1 million a year ago, Balisacan attributed it to a growing domestic job market in terms of quantity and quality.

This means “greater availability of more remunerative jobs, and more profitable ventures,” he said.

These employment gains are expected to redound to the incomes of poor families, the Neda chief said.

But Balisacan expressed alarm over rising food prices, which he said could erode income gains.

Last week, the PSA reported that the poverty incidence among individual Filipinos increased by 1.2 percentage points year-on-year to 25.8 percent in the first half of 2014.

The poverty incidence among Filipino families also rose by 1.2 percentage points to 20 percent during the same period.

Neda said this development was brought on by higher food costs, especially of rice.

Originally posted as of 10:50 AM | March 12, 2015

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