Bongbong Marcos says more work still needed to improve employment rates

President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos | PHOTO: RTVM

MANILA, Philippines — President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Friday welcomed the increased employment rate but believed that more work needs to be done to generate more jobs.

The country’s unemployment rate is at its lowest since 2005 at 4.3 percent as of May 2023, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA). The employment rate is 95.7 percent, which means that 48.26 million in May 2023 people are employed.

Ang puno’t dulo nitong lahat ay trabaho talaga. Kaya kailangan magkaroon ng economic activity para magkaroon ng trabaho ang ating mga kababayan,and slowly, slowly, hindi naman basta’t sinabi natin mangyayari, kailangan marami pa tayong kailangan gawin,” said Marcos during an ambush interview in Fort Bonifacio in Taguig.

(The end-all is really jobs. We need economic activity to create more jobs and slowly, slowly, it won’t happen just because we say it, there is still much to be done.)

Marcos said that the current economic and bureaucratic processes still need to adjust to new policies being introduced that make the Philippines more investor friendly.

The President also said that he wanted quality jobs that guaranteed benefits.

“Ito yung talagang priority sa atin is trabaho kayat lahat naman ng ating ginagawa sa ekonomiya ay para mabigyan, hindi lamang yung underemployed, na klase na trabaho kundi ang magandang trabaho na may future, may benefits,” he said.

(This is really our priority, that is why we are doing everything we can in the economy to give to everyone, not just the underemployed, quality jobs in the future, with benefits.)

“The number of underemployed persons or employed persons 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 was reported at 5.66 million of the 48.26 million employed persons, translating to an underemployment rate of 11.7 percent in May 2023,” said the PSA.

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JPV