Unemployment rate down at 22.9%

Photo: GreenArcher04/Flickr.com

A recent survey conducted by the Social Weather Stations (SWS) concludes that there area around 10.4 million unemployed Filipinos in the first quarter of 2017.

According to the March 25-28 poll, unemployed Filipinos composed of 11.2 percent, or 5.1 million adults, who had resigned or voluntarily left their jobs; 8.6 percent or about 3.9 million adults had involuntarily left their jobs, and 3.1 percent or around 1.4 million adults were first-time job seekers.

It has been concluded that within the 8.6 percent of the Filipinos who had involuntarily left their jobs, 5.1 percent had their previous contracts not renewed while 2.7 percent were laid off, and 0.8 percent had been affected by closed operations by employers.

The number of first-time job-seekers, primarily composed of college students had declined from 4.3 percent by 1.2 points.

The number of unemployed women, on the other hand, decreased by nine percent from 40.2 percent in December 2016 to 31.2 percent in the recent March survey. Meanwhile, the number of unemployed men rose by 2.6 points from 14.1 percent in December to 16.6 percent in March. There has been a significant drop of unemployed men aged 35-44 but the percentage increased in men aged 18-24.

The SWS had conducted a nationwide survey with 1,200 respondents with a sampling error margin of plus or minus three percentage points. The survey was released in Business World in time for Labor Day.

As the Duterte Administration unveils a long string of infrastructure projects, Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III and Presidential Spokesman Ernesto Abella had expressed their optimism in further addressing the issue of unemployment in the country.

However, the Labor sector is still plagued with various issues such as contractualization and uncompetitive wages.