IBON’s data on job creation ‘mathematically impossible’ – Palace

MANILA, Philippines – Malacañang described as “mathematically impossible” the figures released by IBON Foundation that the government only produced 81,000 jobs in 2018.

Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo disputed this claim, citing data from the key government agencies concerned on employment.

“According to both the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) and the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), the government generated 826,000 jobs for the country in 2018 alone,” Panelo said in a statement.

“IBON Foundation’s claim that the average annual job creation under the Duterte Administration equates to only 81,000 is thus mathematically impossible,” he added.

The Palace official said the “the employment rate under the Duterte administration remains very good registering as high as 95.3 percent in October 2016 to a low of 93.4 percent in January 2017, as per data from the PSA.”

IBON, however, disputed the government’s figure.

“The economic managers hailed 825,000 new jobs created in 2018 and unemployment falling by 140,000 bringing the unemployment rate down to 5.3 percent. Unfortunately, these do not tell the whole story,” IBON Foundation Executive Director Jose Enrique Africa said in a statement.

“The Duterte administration has actually created just an average of 81,000 jobs annually with 43.5 million jobs in 2018 compared to 43.4 million in 2016. This is because the economy lost a huge 663,000 jobs in 2017, which was the biggest contraction in employment in 20 years or since 1997,” Africa added.

But Panelo refused to accept IBON’s explanation.

“One must, therefore, ask the methodology undertaken by IBON Foundation on how it arrived at its figures regarding the employment situation in the first two years of the administration,” he said.

“One must also ask if the said foundation is inept or just maliciously reckless to degrade the achievements of the President,” he added.