Jobless rate down, underemployment up in January

MANILA — The unemployment rate slid to 5.8 percent in January from 6.6 percent a year ago, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) reported Friday.

But while the number of jobless in the labor force population decreased, the PSA’s January 2016 Labor Force Survey showed that the underemployment rate increased to 19.7 percent compared with 17.9 percent in the same month in 2015.

The PSA defines the underemployed as “employed persons who express the desire to have additional hours of work in their present job, or to have additional job, or to have a new job with longer working hours.”  SFM