Employment rate hardly improved, says NSO

Despite lower headline jobless number
 
JOB prospects in the Philippine market hardly improved in April, according to the National Statistics Office (NSO), which reported lower unemployment numbers largely due to the government’s temporary work program.

In its quarterly survey, the NSO said the country’s employment rate stood at 92.5 percent in April, or “insignificantly” different from last year’s 92 percent.

The number of unemployed Filipinos dropped to 7.5 percent, or 2.83 million from 8 percent, or 2.9 million last year. In January, unemployment stood at 7.7 percent.

Among the country’s regions, only Metro Manila registered a double-digit unemployment rate of 13.5 percent.

The national labor force grew by 3.8 percent, slightly less than the employment growth of 4.3 percent.

Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Ralph Recto attributed the low unemployment rate to the implementation of the Economic Resiliency Plan (ERP).

“In the crisis you would expect unemployment to worsen, as it did in many other countries. But here, unemployment even improved . . . With the domestic economy gaining more traction and as there are early indicators of the bottoming-out of the global crisis, it is paramount for government to accelerate its spending to return lost remunerative jobs, if not create better quality ones,” Recto said

“With some additional 1.37 million labor entrants competing for employment, the unemployment level was contained by massive government and private sector initiatives and hiring programs,” he said.

Benjamin Diokno, former budget secretary during the Estrada administration said the slight improvement in the employment rate is, at best, “misleading,” adding that “going behind the aggregate numbers show a sharp deterioration of the Philippine labor market.”

The economic professor at the University of the Philippines said the participation rate has increased —a sign that times have turned for the worse.

“Those who can afford not to work before have to find a job because economic conditions have worsened. Second, the quality jobs continue to disappear,” he said.

In the first quarter of the year, economic growth slowed sharply to 0.4 percent from 3.9 percent in the same period last year. Economic managers have since cut their gross domestic product (GDP) growth target this year to between 0.8 percent and 1.8 percent from 3.1 percent to 4.1 percent previously.

An indicator of economic performance, GDP measures the amount of goods and services produced in a country.

Diokno said some 50,000-factory jobs were lost while some 178,000 employers or entrepreneurs closed shop.

He said the decent relatively high-paying jobs were replaced by low-quality, part-time employment. More part-time jobs were created or some 2.4 million while close to a million or 952,000 full-time jobs were lost.

“Also, more workers are asked to settle for less working hours as conditions become more difficult. Some 392,000 unpaid family workers were created,” the economist said.

The NSO reported that of the total 35 million employed persons in April, 50.3 percent worked in the services sector, with those employed in wholesale and retail trade, repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles, as well as the personal and household goods sub-sector comprised the largest at 19.1 of the total number of employed Filipinos.

Workers in the agriculture sector accounted for 35.2 percent of the total, with those engaged in the agriculture, hunting and forestry sub-sector making up the largest at 31 percent of the total.

The NSO said only 14.5 percent of the total employed were in the industry sector, with the manufacturing sub-sector making up the largest percentage or 8.1 percent. –Darwin G. Amojelar, Senior Reporter, Manila Times