More Pinoys went jobless in December

Despite looser restrictions

MANILA, Philippines — The number of unemployed Filipinos slightly increased in December even as the government implemented looser mobility curbs to allow the economy to reopen and take advantage of the holiday season.

Latest data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) showed that more people went out and searched for work in December. Unfortunately, the number of jobs available was still not enough to accommodate more Filipinos.

The labor situation in the country hit a bump at the tailend of 2021 after the unemployment rate inched up to 6.6 percent from 6.5 percent in November.

The latest figure is equivalent to 3.27 million jobless Filipinos, an increase from the 3.16 million the previous month.

In a briefing yesterday, PSA chief Dennis Mapa attributed the increase in the jobless rate to the higher labor force participation rate, or Filipinos aged 15 years and above, which went up from 64.2 percent to 65.1 percent of the total working age population.

This translates to around 49.55 million economically active Filipinos, whether employed or looking for work, an increase from 48.64 million in November.

“Many participated in the labor force, but not all of them got a job and that caused the increase in the unemployment rate. The increase is not that significant but still, there has been a slight uptick,” Mapa said.

“We can see that every time there is a relaxation in the restriction, our participation rate really increases. Plus there was the holiday in the fourth quarter, thus the seasonality in the jobs,” he said.

Some 910,000 additional Filipinos were on the lookout for jobs in December, with the majority aged 25 to 34.

For the full year 2021, the unemployment rate stood at 7.8 percent or equivalent to about 3.7 million jobless Filipinos, an improvement from the 2020 level of 10.4 percent, or 4.5 million, during the first year of the pandemic.

However, this is still far from the pre-pandemic rate of 5.1 percent or roughly 2.3 million unemployed Filipinos. Some 1.44 million jobs must be restored to return to pre-COVID levels.

Leonardo Lanzona, labor economist and professor at the Ateneo de Manila University, said the current labor situation proves that much of the so-called economic recovery has been driven by investments particularly by the government in the construction sector.

In a message to The STAR, Lanzona maintained that the types of jobs that were available before the pandemic were no longer viable.

“The government needs to rethink its industrial policy especially in terms of absorbing the labor surplus. Only then can we return to the pre-pandemic unemployment levels,” Lanzona said.

“Structural reforms are being set in place, but there is no guarantee that such reforms will lead to labor-intensive activities,” he said, noting that the missing jobs are unlikely to be created without a comprehensive job creation program.

For his part, Union Bank of the Philippines chief economist Ruben Carlo Asuncion said the gap of 1.44 million jobs could be reached by at least the end of this year provided there would no longer be any rise in alert levels for 2022 and that restrictions would be eased.

While structural reforms will help in job generation, Asuncion emphasized that as long as the economy remains restricted, the push to generate more jobs, especially quality ones, will continue to be challenged and slow.

Research and advocacy group IBON Foundation, on the other hand, said unemployment continues to inch up as economic activities are still repressed by low incomes and less consumer spending, as well as struggling businesses and enterprises.

IBON executive director Sonny Africa argued that family incomes have dipped so low and household savings have been significantly slashed that merely relaxing restrictions is no longer enough to restore jobs.

“The government has to spend more to spur aggregate demand. It also has to spend on cash transfers, which have higher immediate multiplier effects than capital- and import-intensive infrastructure projects,” Africa told The STAR.

“If the government is just going to passively wait for decent jobs to recover from reopening, it will take years. Informality will bloat official employment figures but this is really just Filipinos trying to get by in whatever way they can,” he said.

Meanwhile, the underemployment rate, pertaining to the proportion of workers who were looking for more hours of work, eased to 14.7 percent or 6.81 million Filipinos from 16.7 percent or 7.62 million in November.

The average weekly hours of work of an employed person also slightly picked up to 39.7 hours from 39.6 hours.

For the entire year, the underemployment rate was at 15.9 percent, slightly lower than the 16.4 percent in 2020 but still far from pre-COVID rate of 13.8 percent.

Further, contributing to the drop in employment was fishing and aquaculture at 393,000, particularly marine fishing.

Other declines were recorded in other service activities, education, public administration and defense, and information and communication.

On the other hand, the biggest driver of the employment gain was agriculture and forestry at 1.07 million.

Other industries that showed the largest increases in job creation include manufacturing at 325,000, human health and social work activities at 165,000, transportation and storage at 146,000, and administrative and support service activities at 127,000.

Workers are grouped into the three sectors, namely, agriculture, industry and the services. Those in the services sector comprised most of the employed persons at 56.6 percent.

The services sector was followed by agriculture with a 25.6 percent share, while the industry sector accounted for the smallest share at 17.8 percent.