Unemployment rate in the country fell from 4.3 percent in May 2023 to 4.1 percent in the same month this year, the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) said on Tuesday.
The NEDA attributed the decline to the measures undertaken by the administration of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to create more quality jobs for Filipinos.
In a press briefing in Malacañang, Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan said the cut in unemployment rate can be gleaned from the May 2024 Labor Force Survey released by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).
“If you look at the numbers, the total additional employment created by our economy was something like 605,000 workers added in the pool of employed people,” Balisacan said.
“And that is very encouraging because if we look further, we zoom into the data, we find that the increase in employment came from jobs opened up in manufacturing, in industry, and in services,” he added.
Balisacan noted the jobs mentioned are those that require middle skilled workers.
“The indicators of the quality of jobs also are encouraging,” Balisacan said. “The underemployment rate dropped from 11.7 to 9.9 percent which is one of the lowest in many years, so that’s very encouraging.”
The NEDA chief also recognized the big increases in the wage and salary of workers, which according to him, is a good indicator of the quality of work.
“When we see that number rising, the quality of employment is rising and so it’s very encouraging that those numbers have increased between May 2023 and May 2024,” he said.
The increase in the country’s total employment for May is driven by the expansion in industry and services, the implementation of the infrastructure flagship projects, and the Pambansang Pabahay Para sa Pilipino Program (4PH) of the Marcos administration.
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