PH records highest employment rate since April 2020 at 94.2%

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines’ employment rate in March stood at 94.2 percent, the highest since April 2020, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) reported Friday.

Based on the PSA’s labor force survey posted on its website, the PSA accounted for 1.50 million more employed individuals from February to March, increasing from 45.48 million to 46.98 million employed people.

The latest employment rate is lower than January 2020’s 94.7 percent, but higher than March 2021’s 92.9 percent.

Results from the March 2022 Labor Force Survey (LFS)

Meanwhile, the number of unemployed individuals in March dropped to 2.87 million from February’s 3.13 million.

The underemployment rate, however, rose from 14 percent in February to 15.8 percent in March. Of the total employed individuals in March, 7.42 million are underemployed.

The PSA described underemployed persons as “those who expressed the desire to have additional hours of work in their present job or to have an additional job or to have a new job with longer hours of work.”

The services sector is the biggest chunk of the labor market, contributing 57.4 percent share of the 46.98 million employed individuals. The agriculture sector followed at 25.2 percent, and the industry sector at 17.4 percent.

The following are the top five sub-sectors that showed an increase in the number of employed people from February to March:

-agriculture and forestry

-administrative and support service activities

-public administration and defense; compulsory social security

-manufacturing

-financial and insurance activities

The country’s Labor Force Participation Rate (LFPR) — or the proportion of the working-age population that is either employed or looking for jobs — further increased at 65.4 percent, the highest since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The PSA said that the employment rate was higher among males than females at 94.7 percent and 93.6 percent, respectively.

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The youth LFPR, meanwhile, is at 36.9 percent in March. The youth labor force was at 7.44 million out of the 20.14 million youth population of 15 to 24 years old.

On May 1, Labor Day, the government rolled out a massive job fair with 137,287 domestic and overseas work awaiting applicants.

EDV