MANILA, Philippines?The number of jobless Filipinos was 180,000 higher in January than a year earlier, pushing the unemployment rate up to 7.7 percent from 7.4 percent, according to the National Statistics Office (NSO).

The jobs lost in the manufacturing sector alone accounted for 62 percent or 112,000 of the increase in the ranks of the unemployed during the period, results of the January 2009 Labor Force Survey conducted by the NSO show.

The financial sector accounted for 28,000 jobs; construction, 17,000; and transport, storage and communication, 15,000.

The NSO said there were 2.855 million jobless Filipinos in the first month of 2009 compared with the 2.675 million in the same month last year.

The regions that registered unemployment rates higher than the national average were Metro Manila (14 percent), Calabarzon (10.9 percent), Central Luzon (9.7 percent), Ilocos (8.5 percent) and Eastern Visayas (7.8 percent).

Assistant Secretary Reydeluz Conferido Tuesday said that the unemployment situation worsened because of the global economic crisis.

Conferido said the Department of Labor and Employment (DoLE) expected the jobless rate to rise as a result of the economic slowdown that led companies to either close or cut down production.

Effects of crisis

?We had said that we will feel the effects of the financial crisis in the first quarter. The unemployment situation worsened a bit. But it?s not dramatic compared with those in the United States and Japan,? he said.

Young people, or those aged 15-24 years old, comprised about half of the unemployed at 49.2 percent.

Those in the prime working age of 25-54 years old accounted for 46.6 percent of the jobless. About 4.2 percent or 119,000 are aged 55 years old and above.

Of those who were employed, 36.3 percent only had part-time work of less than 40 hours a week.

Conferido said the NSO findings were ?consistent? with the reports his office received from local DoLE offices.

Host of export industries

He also noted that the unemployment situation in Metro Manila, the Visayas, and Southern Tagalog were not surprising because these regions were hosting large export-oriented industries adversely affected by the global downturn.

The fear that the crisis would displace more women than men was unfounded as nearly two in every three unemployed workers were male. Many of the electronics and garments factories that laid off workers or shut down employed women.

Male-dominated sectors

Conferido said he was initially ?puzzled? by the results, but said this could be attributed to the fact that male-dominated sectors like construction and transport were heavily affected.

Of the employed, 51.2 percent worked in the services sector, 34.6 percent in agriculture, and only 14.2 percent in the industrial sector.

The number of Filipinos who opted out of the labor force grew by some 520,000 to 21.54 million from 21.02 million.

Discouraged

This could mean more Filipinos, discouraged by the tight labor market, have stopped looking for work or more Filipinos returned to school or entered retraining programs, Conferido said.

The NSO defines the unemployed as those aged 15 years and over, who have no jobs or are not running a business and are actively looking for jobs but can not find any.

The unemployed also include those who at the time of the survey were not looking for jobs because they believed there were none available, or because of temporary disability or sickness or bad weather, or because they had pending job applications or interviews.

The underemployed are those who want to have additional hours of work in their present job or to have an additional job, or to have a new job with longer working hours.

Unskilled workers registered the largest group at 31.9 percent of the employed in January 2009. Farmers, forestry workers and fishermen were the second largest group, accounting for 17.3 percent of the total.

There are now 58.7 million Filipinos of working age or 1.3 million more than the 57.4 million recorded last year.

Bright spots

Despite the bleak results of the NSO survey, Conferido said there were bright spots in the labor market.

He noted that the underemployment rate declined slightly to 18.2 percent from 18.9 percent and the number of wage and salary earners grew 2.8 percent to 488,000.

The number of employers also rose to 1.42 million from 1.28 million. This could mean more Filipinos have become entrepreneurs, Conferido said.

He also noted that the wholesale and retail sector, real estate, renting and business activities, and education sector expanded and created new jobs in 2009. With reports from Ronnel W. Domingo and Agence France-Presse