Unemployment rate eases to 7% in April 2014

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MANILA — The Philippines unemployment rate for April 2014 has eased to 7.0 percent from April 2013’s unemployment rate of 7.6 percent, and April 2012’s 7.5 percent, results from the latest Labor Force Survey (LFS) of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) reported Tuesday.

According to PSA, highest number of unemployed population in April was in Metro Manila with unemployment rate of 10.4 percent.

This is followed by Ilocos Region with 9.2 percent unemployment rate; Central Luzon with 8.6 percent unemployment rate; and Calabarzon with 9.0 percent unemployment rate.

Majority or 61.7 percent of the total unemployed persons in April were male and the remaining 38.3 percent were unemployed women.

In terms of age group, ages 15 to 24 years old contributed 49.8 percent of the total unemployed population in April followed by ages 25 to 34 years old at 30.5 percent.

“By educational attainment, one-fifth or 22.4 percent of the unemployed were college graduates, 14.5 percent were college undergraduates, and 32.7 percent were high school graduates,” PSA added.

Early this year, the World Bank identified the Philippines having the highest youth inactivity in the East Asia and the Pacific region since the country has difficulty to absorb young graduates to the labor market.

Karl Kendrick Chua, World Bank senior country economist, said the government should address concerns in four areas including infrastructure and education, complimentary reforms ensuring the security of property rights, enhancing competition, and simplifying the procedures and regulations in operating and closing a business in order to ease putting up investments and further generate more jobs to address youth inactivity and unemployment.

Meanwhile, employment rate in April increased to 93 percent higher than April 2013’s and 2012’s employment rate of 92.4 percent and 92.5 percent, respectively. This is close to government’s target for employment rate for the remaining three years of the Aquino administration at 93.3 to 93.5 percent.

On the other hand, underemployment also contracted to 18.2 percent in April of this year from 19.2 percent in April 2013 and 2012.