MANILA — The country’s unemployment rate in April 2018 declined to 5.5 percent from 5.7 percent in the same month in 2017, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) data showed Tuesday.
National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) Undersecretary Rosemarie Edillon said in a press briefing that April 2018’s labor data recorded the lowest unemployment rate compared to April data over the past decades.
Edillon noted that unemployment among youth also improved to 13.8 percent, which is also a record-low youth unemployment rate in the past decades, from 14.9 percent.
“What we are really interested is that they should be either in employment, education, and training,” she added. “For those who did not join the labor force among youth, they often cited reason is really that they are really actually in school.”
Moreover, Edillon noted that the Build Build Build Program of the Duterte administration has contributed to job generation in the past months.
Of the over 600,000 jobs created, Edillon mentioned that majority of these jobs came from construction sector with 468,000 fresh jobs for Filipinos in this sector.
However, underemployment also rose in April 2018 to 17 percent from 16.1 percent in the same period last year.
NEDA defined those underemployed as those who want to have “additional working hours in their present job, or to have additional job, or to have a new job with longer working hours”.
Edillon said there is ample demand for workers in the country, but the government should address mismatch between the demand of the industry and the skills of available talent in the labor market to improve the underemployment figures.
“What really has to happen is for the workers to really improve their employability so they get into the more remunerative jobs, it’s the job the gives you decent wages. And the way to do that is though human capital investments,” she said.
“In the case of our government, we have been investing in human capital. Especially in higher education, we have free tuition in state universities and colleges. We have actually increased our assistance even to TVET (technical and vocational education and training) schools for those who would like to improve their skills,” the NEDA official added. (Kris Crismundo/PNA)
