By Alec Go
There were approximately 828,000 child laborers in the Philippines in 2022, lower than the 935,000 in 2021, based on the Working Children Situation report of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) released last month.
The latest figure is 56.0% of the 1.48 million working children in the country last year. This is lower than the 68.0% both recorded in 2021 and 2020.
The PSA consider working children as child laborers when they are engaged in hazardous work and are working for long hours of “more than 40 hours and/or night time or the entire day” when they are 15 to 17 years old, and when working “in excess of the allowable work hours or less than 20 hours” for those below 15 years old.
According to the PSA, child labor is higher among boys who comprise the majority of the numbers at 548,000 or 66.2%.
It noted that child laborers aged 15 to 17 years old continued to comprise the largest share of working children engaged in child labor of about 61.6%.
It added that the agriculture sector also has the largest share of child laborers at 68.8%, followed by the services sector with 25.9%, and the industry sector with 5.3%.
Soccsksargen, which has the highest proportion of working children at 12.3%, also had the highest incidence of child labor at 12.5%.
In a separate news release, the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) said the decline is a testament to efforts against child labor.
“The decrease in the number of child laborers shows the continued support and efforts of the Department and its social partners in preventing and eliminating child labor in the country,” DOLE Secretary Bienvenido Laguesma said.
“We will not stop until we reach our target of zero child laborers under Chapter 3 of the Philippine Development Plan 2023-2028,” he added. – gb
