Unemployment rate flat at 4.8% in February; job quality improves
MANILA, Philippines (Updated, 11:09 a.m.) — Joblessness slightly went up in February, although the quality of available work got better, state statisticians reported Tuesday.
Results of a nationwide survey of 11,165 households showed there were 2.47 million Filipinos who were either jobless or out of business in February, higher than 2.37 million unemployed persons recorded in January, the Philippine Statistics Authority said.
That translated to an unemployment rate of 4.8% in February, unchanged from the preceding month.
Meanwhile, PSA data showed there were 6.29 million people who were on the hunt for additional working hours to augment their income in February, lower than the 6.65 million in January.
That's equivalent to an underemployment rate of 12.9%, down from 14.1% in the preceding month.
'Job quality issues remain'
Latest data broken down showed that on an annual basis, human health and social work activities (129,000), construction (103,000), mining and quarrying (60,000), information and communication (55,000) and manufacturing (38,000) shed the highest number of jobs among sub-sectors in February.
In February, joblessness was less-than-ideal as well, since the figures remain grim. Jobs in manufacturing (-319,000), administrative and support service activities (-177,000), information and communication (-79,000), real estate activities (-77,000), and transportation storage (-73,000) during the month.
Contrasting this data are firms in the services, which have proven to be a reliable growth generator for the domestic economy. Hundreds of thousands of Filipinos each joined the workforce of these particular subsectors in February: wholesale and retail trade, repair of motor vehicles, accommodation and food service activities, agriculture and forestry, other service activities, and fishing and aquaculture.
For Leonardo Lanzona, an economist at Ateneo De Manila University, there were few causes for rejoicing these developments.
“The conditions are not significantly different from those observed in January,” he said.
The Ateneo economist pointed out that the data did not paint a clear picture of gig work, such as those found in online platforms. For him, the jobs created in the month remain to be of lower quality compared to jobs shed in the construction and manufacturing subsectors.
“The issues of job quality and precariousness despite the slightly lower underemployment remain,” Lanzona added.
On the one hand, Domini Velasquez, chief economist at China Banking Corp., reiterated how the labor market has shifted as the Philippine economy continues to recover from pandemic fallout. The consumer spending explosion was dampened by inflation woes, as supply shortages sent prices of some key food items to turn expensive.
“The country’s labor market performance in February remains consistent with the view of an expanding economy but slightly weaker from the previous year as economic momentum wanes from pandemic reopening,” she said in a Viber message.
Velasquez pointed out the jobless rate in February proved to be slightly worse than November 2022, which posted 4.2%. For context, the domestic economy was on the throes of fully reopening itself, as the Marcos Jr. administration just scrapped mandatory mask-wearing policies in October.
Despite this, the ChinaBank economist expects weakness to persist in some key sectors, which the domestic economy relies on to churn growth and pad employment.
“Moving forward, we expect continued weakness in the industry segment, such as manufacturing, as global demand wanes. We remain to see how government policies in agriculture and fishery will continue to buoy the segments,” Velasquez added.
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