11.5M adult Pinoys jobless in 1st quarter 2014 –SWS poll

Around 11.5 million adult Filipinos were without work in the first quarter of 2014, according to a new survey by pollster Social Weather Stations.

The poll placed the first quarter jobless rate at 25.7 percent, a slight deceleration from 2013’s last quarter rate of 27.5 percent (12.1 million Filipinos), a report on BusinessWorld said.

The SWS pointed out that the joblessness rate has been above 20 percent since May 2005, except on three occasions.

Also, joblessness fell to a record low 5.4 percent in February 1998, and went up to a record high of 34.4 percent in February 2009.

The first quarter 2014 poll was taken from March 27 to 30, and used face-to-face interviews of 1,200 adults nationwide, with sampling error margins of ±3% for national, ±6% for regional percentages applying to the survey.

The SWS explained that the definition of joblessness they used differed with that used by the government.

For SWS, joblessness means having no job at the moment and also looking for one. Housewives, students, and others who are not working but are not job-hunting are not included.

In contrast, the government’s official Labor Force Survey counts as unemployed those not working, are looking for work and are available to work.

Also, the SWS interviewed respondents who are at least 18 years old, while the government includes those who are at least 15 years old.

Using the government’s guidelines would have placed adult joblessness as of March to 17.1 percent, represnting 6.9 million Filipinos.

Optimism

Around 36 percent of poll respondents believed that there will be more job openings available in the next 12 months, while 32 percent are of the opinion things will not change.

Another 23 percent said there will even be fewer job openings available in 12 months.

This amounts to a net optimism score of “fair” at +13 (percentage of those who believe more jobs would be available, minus the percentage of those who believe there will be fewer jobs).

The net optimism score is six points down from the “fair” +19 in the last quarter of 2013.

Resigned, retrenched, first-timers

According to the SWS poll, of those who are jobless, 11.4 percent (5.1 million) resigned, 10.7 percent (4.8 million) were retrenched, and 3.3 percent (1.5 million) were seeking jobs for the fist time.

“Adult joblessness has traditionally been dominated by those who voluntarily left their old jobs and who lost their jobs due to economic circumstances beyond their control,” the SWS explained.

Of those retrenched, 6.4 percent said their contracts were not renewed, 2.2 percent said their employers closed shop, while two percent were laid off.

Comparing the recent results to those of December 2013, the number of those who resigned went down by 2.1 points from 13 percent. The number of those retrenched, on the other hand, went up from 10.4 percent. Those seeking jobs for the first time stayed the same at 3.5 percent.

Sexes, age groups

The number of women who were jobless rose 1.9 points to 37.8 percent. Among men, it went down by 4.7 points to 16.5 percent.

Joblessness declined by 8.9 points among those 18 to 24 years old to 43.4 percent, and those aged 25 to 34 to 30.5 percent from 33.1 percent.

It declined as well among those aged 45 and above to 16.5 percent from 17.7 percent.

However, it went up by 0.5 point to 25.5 percent among those aged 35 to 44. — Joel Locsin/DVM/KG, GMA News