RP achieves considerable improvement in employment quality

MANILA, Philippines – The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) takes a strong exception to a recent article published in your newspaper which claims “DOLE” data as the basis in claiming the current, outgoing administration has failed in the area of employment (“GMA failed to bring down unemployment rate — DOLE data,” The Philippine STAR, June 15, 2010).

Contrary to the headline and as culled from the NSO data, the unemployment rate actually went down. Regrettably, while the article cited DOLE data as its basis, the reference has been erroneous since it is NSO and not the DOLE that produced the data referred to in the article. The “data” used here, we would like to point out, were sourced from the Labstat Updates (Vol. 14 no. 35, June 2010 issue) herewith attached, published by our Bureau of Labor and Employment Statistics (BLES), which is an analysis and study based on the results of the annual Labor Force Surveys of the NSO, for the large part.

In the interest of fairness, we would like to seek the inclusion of the following facts, which have not been cited in the said report:

a) During most of the decade, the quality of employment in the country as based on the LFS had positively increased. This is markedly indicated by the yearly data indicating the increase in full-time employment (pertaining to the number of workers working 40 hours per week or full-time workers) registering positively at +1.9 percent in 2000, and respectively at +2.5 percent, +3.8 percent, +2.8 percent, +4.2 percent in 2002 to 2005, +4.7 percent and +3.9 percent in 2007 to 2008, and declining only in 2001 (-2.1 percent), in 2006 (-0.6 percent), and 2009 (a slight –0.5 percent).

b) However, despite corresponding growth in part-time employment during the same period, a cursory gleaning of the same data indicates that this took place at a roughly similar pacing, with declines noted in 2008 (-2.6 percent) amidst a corresponding increase of 3.9 percent in full time employment, and in 2000 (-5.8 percent) vis-å-vis a 1.9 percent full-time employment increment notwithstanding the El Niño phenomenon. Please note that a 21.2 percent increase in part-time employment in 2001 occurred largely amidst the transition ensuing from the EDSA 2 revolution and a global slowdown.

We hope that the article had taken the extra mile to delve further into a more complete and relevant set of data notwithstanding the relative incompleteness of the older reference used. This is significant since, as of April 2010 the latest Labor Force Survey of the NSO has pegged a considerable improvement in the quality of employment in the Philippines, indicating that full-time employment nationwide has grown by 9.5 percent (or an increase almost 1.9 million) to 21.7 million full-time employed workers, from only 19.8 million in April 2009.

Furthermore, this marked improvement in the quality of employment in the country — notwithstanding all attempts to criticize, denigrate, and negate all semblance of government and social partnership-based effort, program, and achievement — is implied by no less than the International Labor Organization (ILO) in a global employment report, in particular citing the growth of the paid workers in the Philippines, which include those in full-time employment. –Ma Joji V. Aragon, Assistant Secretary, Department of Labor (philstar.com)