Research group IBON said the recently reported large\nincrease in employment and slight decrease in unemployment bring much-needed\nrelief to millions of Filipinos who have been suffering worsening unemployment\nsince the Duterte administration began. The group however also warned against\ncomplacency. Looking at the official labor force survey results more completely\nshows that the majority of jobs created were temporary and poor-quality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) reported that in\nOctober 2019 the employment rate grew to 95.5%, while the unemployment rate was\nlower at 4.5 percent. The number of employed Filipinos rose by 1.8 million to\n43.1 million and the number of unemployed declined by 153,000 to 2 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to IBON estimates correcting for government\nunderestimation, however, the number of unemployed was actually 4.1 million in\nOctober 2019. This is over double the officially reported 2 million unemployed.\nOfficial unemployment figures do not reflect discouraged workers who stopped\nlooking for work in the past six months or those unable to immediately take up\nwork, instead considering them as \u2018not in the labor force\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The economy\u2019s productive sectors continue to weaken, said\nthe group. IBON noted that while employment in agriculture in October 2019\nincreased, the sector is on a general trend of decline due to government\nneglect and anti-farmer policies. The number of employed in agriculture fell\nfrom 11.8 million in October 2016 to 10.4 million in October 2017 and 10\nmillion in October 2018. This slightly bounced up to 10.1 million in October\n2019 but not enough to recover the significant agricultural job losses since the\nstart of the Duterte administration. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
IBON said, in particular, the agriculture, hunting and\nforestry subsector lost 49,000 jobs falling to 8.8 million in October 2019 from\n8.85 million in October last year. This likely includes rice farmers displaced\nby the recently passed Rice Liberalization Law. This was only offset by a\n214,000 surge in fisheries employment, to 1.31 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The manufacturing sector also continues to weaken, said the\ngroup, with the number of employed in the sector decreasing by 56,000 to 3.61\nmillion in October 2019 from 3.7 million in October 2018. Agriculture and\nmanufacturing are the most important sectors for job generation, increasing\nincomes, and economic development so this weakening should be cause for\nconcern.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
IBON said that the main sources of additional jobs were in in\nsectors where employment is temporary and poor quality or jobs that are\nlow-paying, uncertain and informal. Those employed in wholesale and retail\ntrade increased by 563,000 to 8.56 million, in transportation and storage by\n336,000 to 3.50 million, and in construction by 308,000 to 4.22 million. These\nthree sectors accounted for some two-thirds of net employment generation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The wholesale and retail trade sector in particular is\nnotorious for low-earning and insecure work, the group said. The trade subsector\nhas the lowest average daily basic pay among all subsectors outside\nagriculture. As of the latest available data from 2018, wage and salary workers\nin the trade subsector were paid just Php358 compared to the Php404 average in\nindustry and Php483 average across all services. Contractual low-paid work is\nalso the norm in the construction sector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The concern about poor quality work is confirmed by how 1.34\nmillion of the 1.82 million additional employment, or an overwhelming\nthree-out-of-four new jobs, was in part-time work of less than 40 hours per\nweek, said IBON. The mean hours worked per week correspondingly fell from 42.8\nhours in October 2018 to 41.8 hours in October 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The\nnumber of those who worked without pay also continued to increase by 187,000 to\nreach 2.53 million in October 2019, the group noted.\n\n\n\nIBON said that the government should be careful\nin hailing ‘record low unemployment’ if the quality of work is still so\nuncertain, irregular and low-paying. The immediate relief of at least some work\nfor so many now should not distract the government from taking real steps to\ndevelop domestic agriculture and Filipino industry. These are needed for\nmillions of Filipinos to enjoy stable, regular and higher-paying jobs and be\nlifted from poverty, the group said. ###\n\n\n\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NEWS<\/p>\n
Research group IBON said the recently reported large increase in employment and slight decrease in unemployment bring much-needed relief to millions of Filipinos who have been suffering worsening unemployment since the Duterte administration began. The group however also warned against complacency. Looking at the official labor force survey results more completely shows that the majority of jobs created were temporary and poor-quality. <\/p>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":8846,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2048,14],"tags":[347,147,134,995,116,276,2047,309],"class_list":["post-8845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-banner","category-news","tag-duterte-administration","tag-employment","tag-jobs","tag-labor-force-survey","tag-philippine-economy","tag-poor-quality-work","tag-programs-and-policies","tag-unemployment","wpautop"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-23 14:13:26","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8845"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8845\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8848,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8845\/revisions\/8848"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}