By Ferdinand Patinio/PNA
MANILA — More than 820,000 jobs were created in 2018, resulting in the employment of more than 41 million workers, Labor Secretary Silvester Bello III said on Tuesday.
Bello attributed the available employment to the different sectors, including the government’s infrastructure programs.
“The employment situation in the Philippines continues to improve as more Filipinos are getting employed through increased job opportunities in various sectors, such as the ‘Build, Build, Build’ infrastructure program of the administration. This mainly helped us sustain the rise in employment,” he said in a statement.
“Also, more workers are now enjoying security of tenure,” he added.
According to the October 2018 Labor Force Survey (LFS) conducted by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), 826,000 jobs were generated in 2018, employing a total of 41.160 million workers.
The figure is 2 percent higher than the 40.334 million hired employees in 2017.
The report noted improvements in the quality of employment as the number of remunerative and stable wage employment reached 26.6 million, which is 2.9 percent, or 743,000 wage employment compared to the same period in 2017.
Full-time employment also grew by 4.7 percent, reaching 29.3 million last October, from 28 million last year.
On the other hand, as of October, the campaign of the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) against illegal forms of contractualization has so far netted 411,449 regularized workers.
Of the number, 70 percent of employees had been voluntarily regularized while the remaining 30 percent were regularized through inspection.
“This can be attributed to DOLE’s strict enforcement of campaign against illegal contractualization, as well as to the department’s strengthened employment facilitation services and enhanced social protection programs for our workers,” Bello said.
The report, however, said underemployment increased at 6.735 million or 3.5 percent, 229,000 higher than last year.
