Jobless rate drops to 6.6% in January

MANILA, Philippines - The country's unemployment rate dropped to 6.6 percent in January, improving from the 7.5 percent posted in the same period last year, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) reported on Thursday.

Data from the January 2015 Labor Force Survey (LFS) showed that there were a total of 1.04 million jobs created from last year, almost four times bigger than the number of jobs created the previous year.

"The labor market got a boost from a stronger growth in all sectors mainly driven by services which grew by 3.9 percent, contributing a 766,000 net employment gain in January 2015,” Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan said.

He said  the number of unemployed went down by 334,000 to 2.6 million during the period, with employment growing faster at 2.8 percent compared to the labor force growth of 1.8 percent. Balisacan added that it was also partly due to the stronger growth of services employment.

PSA noted that four regions, namely, National Capital Region (90.7 percent), CALABARZON (91.4 percent), Ilocos Region (91.5 percent), and Central Luzon (91.5 percent) had employment rates lower than the national figure, which was pegged at 93.4 percent.

The underemployment rate, which measures the number of persons who work for less than 40 hours in a week, was at 17.5 percent from 19.5 percent a year ago. 

"This translates to a reduction in the number of underemployed workers to 6.5 million in January 2015 from about 7.1 million a year ago," the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) noted.

“For this period, the number of underemployed persons contracted among wage and salary workers, as well as self-employed workers, which possibly means greater availability of more remunerative jobs and more profitable ventures,” said Balisacan.

“From employment gains to reductions in unemployment and underemployment, the labor market is becoming robust, and we hope that this will continue and further benefit the poor, especially as the economy grows faster at a higher trajectory,” he added.

Data for the January 2015 LFS round still excluded Region 8, in order to be comparable with the labor and employment data in the January 2014 LFS round. 

"The region suffered from devastation by typhoon Yolanda causing labor displacement and thus no survey was conducted in the area last year. An alternative estimate which excludes Leyte only, rather than the whole Region 8, in the January 2015 LFS round shows little effect on the estimate of the national unemployment rate," NEDA noted.