The Philippines missed its goal to cut the jobless rate last year as it shed more than 600,000 jobs, the National Economic and Development Authority said.
In its Socioeconomic Report 2017, the state planning agency Neda said that the national unemployment rate last year inched up to 5.7 percent of the labor force from 5.5 percent in 2016.
“While the current unemployment rate has improved compared to previous decades, this is behind the 5.1-5.4 percent target set in 2017,” Neda noted.
“Employment creation remains a challenge as there were around 663,243 net employment losses in 2017,” Neda explained.
In contrast, the government under the Duterte administration’s socioeconomic blueprint Philippine Development Plan for 2017-2022 targeted to jack up jobs by between 900,000 and one million each year.
The 2017-2022 PDP wanted to slash the unemployment rate to as low as 3-5 percent by 2022.
Under the PDP, the reduction in the jobless rate will be done by sustaining 7 to 8 percent gross domestic product (GDP) growth in the medium term by pursuing the Duterte administration’s 10-point socioeconomic agenda ultimately aimed at reducing the poverty incidence to 14 percent in 2022.
For this year, PDP 2017-2022 aims to cut the unemployment rate to 4.7-5.3 percent.
As for youth unemployment, the rate rose to 14.4 percent last year even as the plan was a reduction to 11 percent.
For 2018, the PDP sought to reduce the youth unemployment rate to 10.4 percent.
“On the bright side, underemployment rate in areas outside National Capital Region continues to decrease and is at 17.4 percent in 2017 from 19.7 percent in 2016, exceeding the target of 18.3-20.3 percent for the year,” Neda said.
In 2018, the government eyes a further reduction in the underemployment rate outside Metro Manila to 17.8 to 19.8 percent.
The Philippine Statistics Authority 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.” —BEN O. DE VERA