Unemployment down, more jobs created in January 2016 – NEDA

MANILA – More jobs were generated for Filipinos in January 2016, which reflects the continued dynamism of the economy, according to the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA).

The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) reported on Friday that the number of employed Filipinos grew by 2.0 percent to 39.2 million with an estimated 752,000 additional jobs created between January 2015 and January 2016.

This brought down unemployment rate to 5.8 percent from 6.6 percent in January 2015, with broad-based improvements coming from most regions, across all age groups, almost all educational levels, and for both men and women.

“Our labor market was boosted by better employment opportunities in the industry and services sectors. This performance also brought the unemployment rate to its second lowest in the decade, with the lowest recorded in October last year,” said Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Emmanuel F. Esguerra.

The industry and services sectors generated 508,000 and 1.18 million additional jobs, respectively, in January 2016.

“With employment growing faster at 2.0 percent relative to the labor force growth of 1.1 percent, the number of unemployed went down by 279,000 to 2.4 million during the period,” the Cabinet official said.

“With the favorable labor market situation in January 2016 and the continued slowdown in the national unemployment rate, the Philippine Development Plan target of 6.5-6.7 percent for unemployment rate in 2016 is likely to be achieved,” added Esguerra, who is also NEDA Director-General.

On the other hand, the slight decline in labor force participation rate was partly due to the decision among the youth to opt out of the labor force to attend school and become full-time students.

However, underemployment, which refers to those who are working but wanted more work, worsened to 19.7 percent from 17.9 percent year-on-year. There were approximately 7.7 million underemployed persons, most of whom were wage and salary workers in private establishments.

“Despite the increase in underemployment, positive results in indicators of quality of work, such as the mean hours of work, class of workers and the full-time employment, signal that efforts to foster more remunerative employment are gaining traction,” Esguerra said.

Meanwhile, the number of remunerative and stable wage and salary workers increased by 2.7 million and their share in total employment greatly surged to 63.3 percent in January 2016 from 57.5 percent in January 2015. The number of full-time workers also increased by 2.8 million.

To further improve the employment situation in the country, Esguerra said the government should focus efforts on equipping students with industry-relevant competencies and skills, and increasing opportunities for work experience.

He also stressed the need to urgently address the continued lag in employment in the agriculture sector, which recorded a net employment loss of 935,000. This is consistent with the weak agricultural output given the El Niño phenomenon, which peaked in December 2015.

“Agriculture accounts for over a quarter of total employment. This highlights the need to further improve the resiliency of farmers to mitigate effects of unfavorable weather conditions such as the El Niño which may persist until May 2016. Also, enhancing skills and improving capacities of affected farm workers is important for them to have a smoother transition to more stable work,” he said.