MANILA, Philippines — Barring another calamity, the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) is hoping that the country’s labor force will recover in the first quarter of 2021 from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic.
In an interview with “The Chiefs” aired on Cignal TV’s One News on Tuesday, DOLE Assistant Secretary Dominique Rubia-Tutay said this improvement would be slow but sure.
“We’re hoping there will be no calamity that will happen during the first quarter. If you remember, during the first quarter of this year, Taal Volcano erupted and it had a big impact on us, and then here comes COVID-19,” she said.
Tutay said the labor market has received the result of the latest Labor Force Survey (LFS) conducted by the Philippine Statistics Office in October indicating an unemployment rate of 8.7 percent. This figure translates to 3.3 million Filipinos without jobs.
“It improved a bit if you compare that with the July LFS, which showed 10 percent or equivalent to 4.4 million unemployed Filipinos,” she said.
Tutay described this as a major improvement from the 17 percent unemployment rate during the height of the pandemic in April, which was equivalent to 7.3 million jobless people.
She said many business establishments remain closed to this day.
“It’s not easy because if you are closed for nine months, you don’t have any income at all. And if you open up, 50 percent of businesses are temporarily closed, you don’t have much or the 100 percent consumers that you enjoyed prior to COVID-19,” she said.
Hardest hit by the pandemic in terms of employment losses are the transportation and logistics sector; accommodation and food services or tourism-related businesses; arts, entertainment and recreation; wholesale and retailers.
Agriculture gained compared to the industry and service sectors.
Tutay said overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) were also impacted by the pandemic, with 350,000 of them repatriated.
There are still about 100,000 OFWs who have yet to be repatriated or have decided to stay at their worksite.
“It might increase until the end of this year. We are looking at around 700,000 at the most and hopefully it will not reach that big,” she added.