By Alec Go
The employment rate of the Philippines rose to 95.5% in October 2022, the highest since the COVID-19 pandemic struck the country in January 2020, based on the latest labor force survey of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).
The latest employment data translates to 47.11 million employed individuals and is up from the 95.0% in September 2022. The number of employed individuals is also higher than the 43.82 million in the same period last year.
Unemployment figures also declined to pre-pandemic levels at 4.5% from September 2022’s 5.0%. This means 2.24 million Filipinos were unemployed, down by around 256,000 from September’s 2.50 million jobless Filipinos and by 1.26 million from October 2021.
Underemployment likewise went down to 14.2% or 6.67 million underemployed Filipinos. This is lower than October 2021’s 16.1% and in September 2022’s 15.4%.
The PSA noted that 49.35 million or 64.2% of Filipinos were part of the labor force in October 2022.
In a release, the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) expressed optimism that the Philippine economy is on to a robust economic recovery from the pandemic.
“The country’s sustained recovery of the labor market backs our confidence that our policies and interventions to reinvigorate our economy are working,” NEDA Secretary Arsenio Balisacan said.
“While the employment numbers have improved, we recognize that we need to expand efforts towards creating more and high quality employment by improving workforce employability. We need to do this if we really want to pursue economic transformation,” he added.
Balisacan also noted that the resumption of full face-to-face classes has “paved the way for us to immediately address the learning losses from the pandemic.”
“Also, with children back in school, parents-at-home—especially mothers—are also able to pursue more income opportunities,” he added. – gb
