Jobless rate drop proof economy is strong–Palace

The drop in adult joblessness in the second quarter of the year is proof of the country’s robust economy, Malacañang said on Thursday.

Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque welcomed the results of the latest Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey, which showed that adult joblessness dropped to 19.7 percent in the second quarter of 2018.

This was 4.2 percentage points lower than the 23.9 percent of adult joblessness recorded in March.

“This is proof that despite our inflation woes, our economy remains strong as evidenced by the reduction in joblessness,” Roque said.

He noted that in the June 2018 survey, there were 8.6 million jobless adult Filipinos, fewer than the 10.9 million recorded in March.

Down by 2.3 million

“This is an improvement over the 10.9 million adults who were considered jobless as per the SWS survey released last March. This means that adult joblessness is down by 2.3 million,” Roque said of the survey, conducted from June 27 to 30.

The latest joblessness rate is 2.5 percentage points lower than the 22.2 percent in June last year, and 4 points higher than the 13-year-low of 15.7 percent, or 7.2 million adults, recorded in December 2017.

Meanwhile, net optimism over the availability of jobs remained “very high” but fell five points from +37 in March to +32 in June.

The survey also found that the adult labor force participation rate declined from 71.4 percent (45.8 million adults) in March to 68.3 percent (43.8 million adults) in June.

1,200 adults surveyed

The nationwide joblessness in the second quarter consisted of 4.2 million adults (9.5 percent) who voluntarily left their old jobs; 3 million adults (6.8 percent) who involuntary lost their jobs and 1.5 million (3.4 percent) first-time job seekers.

The survey interviewed 1,200 adults nationwide and had a margin of error of plus-or-minus 3 percentage points.

Forty-seven percent of the respondents expressed optimism that there would be jobs available in the next 12 months, down from 49 percent in March, while the percentage of those who said there would be fewer jobs increased to 15 percent from 12 percent.

Joblessness fell in Luzon  (from 28.1 percent to 19.3 percent) and in Visayas (from 21.6 percent to 19 percent), while it hardly changed in Metro Manila (from 19 percent to 19.4 percent) and Mindanao (from 20.8 percent to 21.2 percent). —JULIE M. AURELIO AND INQUIRER RESEARCH