NEDA explains government numbers

In the light of the results of the 2009 first quarter Social Weather Stations (SWS), the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) clarified the official definition of unemployment as used in the Labor Force Survey (LFS) which is conducted by the National Statistics Office (NSO), which should be considered when conducting surveys.

“In coming up with the LFS, the definition of unemployment is adopted based on international standards. An unemployed person is not just someone without work. Using the definition, we have to consider the availability criterion that if a person has no work but is not available or unwilling to work, he or she cannot be considered unemployed,” NEDA Officer-in-Charge Rolando Tungpalan said.

Since April 2005, the unemployment definition adopting the international standards has been used in the LFS as approved through National Statistical Coordination Board Resolution Number 15 dated October 20, 2004.

As provided in that resolution, the unemployed includes all persons who are 15 years and over as of their last birthday and are reported as: (1) without work and currently available for work and seeking work; or (2) without work and currently available for work but not seeking work for the following reasons: tired/believed no work available; awaiting results of previous job application; temporary illness/disability; bad weather; and waiting for rehire/job recall.

In the latest LFS released in March, the country’s unemployment rate was at 7.7 percent with the unemployment level reaching 2.9 million in January. The next LFS results will be available in June.

 As the unemployment rate has been steadily increasing since the country was hit by the global economic crisis last year, the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) has to redouble its efforts to provide work opportunities for the 2.8 million jobless Filipinos.

DOLE’s problem will in fact be five times as hard, if it is to heed the jobless counts made by the Ibon Foundation and the SWS, both of which see a much larger population of Filipinos needing jobs.

The Labor department’s Labor Force Survey (LFS), which is derived from the National Statistics Office’s (NSO) quarterly evaluation on the country’s labor situation, reported in mid-March that the recent unemployment figure reached 7.7 percent for the first quarter this year, slightly higher than the 7.4 percent posted during the same period last year.

But the figure released by the Labor department is much less than the 14 million jobless reported for the first quarter by the SWS earlier this month. The said figure is obtained from its survey conducted from February 20 to 23 of this year.

The SWS survey says that the country had a record-high 34.2-percent unemployment figure for the first quarter this year. The survey also found out that of the 11 to 14 million jobless Filipinos, 13-percent voluntarily resigned from their old jobs, 12 percent were retrenched, 9 percent were laid off and the remaining 3 percent had unrenewed contracts.

An earlier report by The Manila Times quoted the IBON Foundation describing unemployment figures released by the government as “a gross underestimation of joblessness.”

But the Labor department’s media director, Jay Julian, argued that the reason why government figures are different from private research and survey institutions like SWS and IBON is because both sectors use different sampling techniques and methods when conducting the said unemployment study.

“Kaya magkakaiba ang [data] na lumalabas is because we use different sampling techniques. It also depends on the kind of questions you ask,” Julian said, adding that as a department, they could not be specific on how the survey is being conducted because they rely on the data being released by the NSO.

He also explained that the discrepancy in the number of respondents also give way to the disparity in figures reported by various sectors.

Julian said that SWS only makes use 1,500 respondents while the Labor Force Survey, which is based on NSO statistics, operates on 51,000 households nationwide.

“If for example you have five members in the household, multiply that by 51,000 [and that’s how many respondents the Labor Force Survey has],” he said.

The Labor Force Survey, which was reported in a story in The Manila Times in March, said that the highest unemployment rate in the country was recorded in the National Capital Region—at 14 percent.

An earlier interview with Labor department’s Assistant Secretary Teresa Soriano also revealed that Region IV had the highest number of retrenched workers.

“It [global financial crisis] is not so much felt in the Visayas region, but in Region IV . . . many people lost their jobs ever since the crisis [hit the country],” Soriano said.

The LFS also said that the number of unemployed was especially telling in the age group of 25 to 30 with more than 30.3-percent jobless during the first quarter of 2009.

But in spite of the slight increase in the unemployment rate of the working age group, the Labor department maintained that it also only had a slight decrease in the employment rate, with a .3-percent decrease from 92.6 percent last year to 92.3 percent during the first quarter of this year.

Some argue though that the slight decrease in the employment rate does not reflect on the performance of government agencies to produce right-paying jobs for Filipino workers. As the decrease was shown in the employment figure from last year, the population, however, also correspondingly reported an increase.

Julian said that another reason why government unemployment figures differ from private research institutions is that the Labor department adopted the international standard in unemployment surveys, which excluded those who are “voluntarily unemployed” from the jobless rate.

Voluntary unemployment refers to an individual’s decision not to be employed for personal reasons.

“We adopted the standard also being used by the ILO [International Labor Organization] . . . kaya maliit yung unemployment kasi hindi kino-consider yung hindi available for work. Example, hindi pwede mag-work dahil nagaalaga ng bata sa bahay,” Julian explained.

He added that to help mitigate the impact of the global financial crunch, the Labor department has organized various programs like job facilitation, job fairs and job-matching facilities including partnerships with popular job sites job-phil.net and jobstreet.com.

“The department also arranges programs for the enhancement of employment like training and livelihood programs from Tesda [Technical Education and Skills Development Authority] para ma-enhance ang skills ng workers,” Julian said. –Manila Times