Quality Of employment improves – NEDA

MANILA, Philippines — The National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) has stressed that the quality of employment in January 2012 improved due to the expansion of remunerative wage and salary employment as well as the rebound of full-time employment growth.

“The growth of remunerative wage and salary employment expanded by 3.3 percent from a negative 1.2 percent in January 2011. Likewise, the growth of full-time employment rebounded from negative 2.6 percent in January 2011 to 2.6 percent in January 2012,” NEDA Deputy Director General Margarita R. Songco said.

Songco said that based on the labor force survey, majority of Filipino workers remained employed in more remunerative and stable work considering wage and salary workers comprised 54.8 percent of total workers and 3.6 percent were employers. Lesser proportions were self-employed (30.1%) and unpaid workers (11.5%).

Despite the favorable performance of the labor market in January 2012, government must continue to prioritize generating more decent, productive and quality employment that provides adequate income for the Filipino workers.

“Government must continue to implement employment-related policies such as more frequent monitoring of and closer coordination among government agencies that implement the community-based employment program (CBEP), supporting advocacy campaigns for the tourism plan and promote employment-intensive interventions, intensifying implementation of public private partnership (PPP) projects and providing microfinancing and marketing support to micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs),” Songco said.

The government must also improve skills matching through enhancing coordination among employers, the academe and government, reduce youth unemployment by motivating the private sector to increase youth employment opportunities and intensify the use of online labor market information systems by public and private offices to expand the reach to job searchers, Songco pointed out. –EDU LOPEZ, Manila Bulletin