ILO notes decline in PHL jobless rate as world unemployment rises

While unemployment in different parts of the world started to rise again five years after the global financial crisis erupted, the number of Filipinos out of job continue to decline, International Labour Organisation noted on Tuesday.

Unemployment rate in the Philippines edged down to 6.9 percent in the second quarter of 2012, from 7.2 percent a year earlier, according to the ILO Global Employment Trends 2013.

“This decline has been driven by trends in male unemployment: the unemployment rate for Filipino men declined from 7.6 percent to 7.0 percent during the same period but the unemployment rate for women remained unchanged at 6.7 per cent in the same period,” the report read.

In a separate report last month, the Philippine National Statistics Office noted the jobless rate rose to 6.8 percent last October from 6.4 percent a year earlier.

ILO also noted positive developments on youth employment in the Philippines and Indonesia, the two regional neighbors with the largest labor force.

“The youth unemployment rate in the Philippines has trended down in recent years, registering 16.0 percent in the second quarter of 2012, compared with 16.6 per cent in the same period of 2011 and 18.8 percent in the same period of 2010,” it said, noting, however, that young men and women continue to face a difficult situation in the labor market in the South-East Asia region.

73.8M unemployed globally

Unemployment rates for young Filipino men have declined relatively more rapidly in the same comparable period, with the rate for young men falling by 3.2 percentage points compared with 2.1 percentage points for young Filipino women.

On the other hand, some 73.8 million young people are unemployed globally and the slowdown in economic activity will likely push another half million into unemployment by 2014, ILO noted.

Meanwhile, the vulnerable or informal employment rate in the Philippines, which stood at 44.2 percent in the second quarter of 2009, declined steadily to 41.2 percent in second quarter of 2012, said ILO.

In countries with data available, the vulnerable employment rates for women remain significantly higher than for men ranging from 7.6 percentage points in Indonesia to 5.5 percentage points in the Philippines to 4.7 percentage points in Thailand.

ILO said the global unemployment rose in 2012 after falling for two straight years and could further increase this year. It said the number of unemployed worldwide rose by 4.2 million in 2012 to over 197 million – a 5.9 percent unemployment rate.

It added that a quarter of the increase in global unemployment last year were in the advanced economies, while three quarters has been through spillovers into other regions, with marked effects in developing economies in East Asia, South Asia, and Sub Saharan Africa. — Amita Legaspi/VS, GMA News