Employment in April up, but underemployment rises

June 5, 2018

Employment in April rose to 94.5 percent, or an equivalent of 40.9 million Filipinos from 94.3 percent during the same force last year, the Philippine Statistics Authority’s labor force survey said Tuesday.

Net employment generation reached 625,000, reversing the loss recorded in April 2017.

“Employment grew partly due to increased infrastructure spending as the Department of Public Works and Highways’ road projects and rehabilitation of public school facilities are already underway nationwide,” National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) Officer-in-Charge (OIC) and Undersecretary Jose Miguel de la Rosa said in a statement.

Underemployment, referring to those employed but wanting more work, increased to 17 percent or 6.9 million workers in April 2018, compared to 16.1 percent or about 6.5 million underemployed workers in the same period last year.

This is mainly driven by the increase of those employed fulltime but wanting more work by 30.8 percent, or approximately 752,000 workers.

The industry sector recorded a strong employment growth rate of 8.1 percent or 605,000 workers, increasing its total employment share to 19.7 percent, the largest in the past decade. The construction subsector is the biggest contributor  to employment, generating 468,000 jobs, among the industry subsectors during the period.

Unemployment continued to decline to 5.5 percent, the lowest recorded rate for all the April rounds of the LFS in the past decade.

But youth unemployment remained high despite improving to 13.8 percent, which is also the lowest in the past decade.

"We must continue to foster stronger linkages between employers, the academe, and the government to ease access to employment information and opportunities,” de la Rosa said.

“In order for us to achieve our employment targets, reforms in market regulations and tackling structural barriers are important to facilitate the creation of new businesses and to boost the outputs of firms. These may translate to high-productivity jobs,” de la Rosa said.

He explained that apart from the recently passed Ease of Doing Business Act, other key reforms should be pursued to improve the labor market.  These include the reduction of foreign investment restrictions and package 2 of the Tax Reform Program, which will lower corporate taxes while rationalizing investment incentives.

He added that ramping up the government’s Build, Build, Build program will sustain the country’s employment growth. DMS