Unemployment, underemployment rates down in April

Workers assemble micro-motor fans for computers at the Sanyo Denki plant in the Subic Bay Freeport Zone. AFP FILE PHOTO

The number of jobless Filipinos eased while the underemployment rate fell to an over 10-year low in April, state planning agency National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) said Friday.

Citing the results of the Philippine Statistics Authority’s (PSA) April 2017 Labor Force Survey, Neda said the unemployment rate declined to 5.7 percent from 6.1 percent in April last year.

The underemployment rate, meanwhile, hit “its lowest in more than 10 years at 16.1 percent” in April.

The rate of underemployment was “lower by 962,000 workers or 12.9 percent compared with underemployed workers recorded in April 2016,” Neda said in a statement.

The PSA defines the underemployed as “employed persons who express 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 working hours.”

Under the Philippine Development Plan 2017-2022, the Duterte administration aims to reduce the unemployment rate to as low as 3 percent by 2022. JPV