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The country’s unemployment rate fell to 10 percent in July from a high of 17.7 percent in April due to the relaxation of quarantine restrictions, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) said.
Results from the latest PSA Workforce Survey showed that July’s figure was still significantly higher than the 5.4 percent recorded in July last year.
National statistician Dennis Claire Mapa said in a briefing on Thursday that the unemployment rate translates to an estimated 4.6 million people out of work, down from 7.3 million in April, but higher than 2, 4 million July 2019.
He attributed the drop to the relaxation of community quarantine measures, allowing more regions to revitalize economic activity.
The highest unemployment rates were registered in the National Capital Region, 15.8 percent or 929,000 people, and Calabarzon (Cavite, Laguna, Batangas and Quezon), 12.4 percent or 886,000.
The employment rate rebounded to 90 percent in July from a record low of 82.3 percent in April. However, it was lower than the 94.6 percent employment rate in the same month last year.
Mapa said that about 41.3 million Filipinos were working in July 2020, 42.5 million in July 2019, and 33.8 million in April 2020.
The largest number of jobs lost were in the arts, entertainment and recreation; accommodation and food service activities; Information and communication; fishing and aquaculture; and professional, scientific and technical activities.
The underemployment rate, or the proportion of employees who wanted additional work, fell to 17.3 percent from 18.9 percent in April, but was worse than 13.6 percent in July last year.
This corresponds to around 7.1 million underemployed workers from 6.4 million in April and 6.4 million a year ago.
Mapa said that the segment of the population aged 15 and over grew to 74.06 million, compared to 72.44 million in the same period last year and 73.72 million in April.
He said 45.9 million of that segment of the population were part of the workforce, up from 45 million last year and 41 million in April.
In a separate briefing, Labor Undersecretary Dominique Rubia-Tutay said that, according to Labor Department data, a total of 83,654 establishments were temporarily closed, while 28,881 have adopted a flexible work agreement as of Aug. 30.
He added that 9,548 establishments laid off workers or closed permanently.
The acting secretary of the National Economic and Development Authority, Karl Chua, said that the improvement in the employment situation would depend on everyone’s cooperation to meet the minimum health standards imposed during the coronavirus pandemic, improve testing capacity , tracking and isolation, and the extent to which the public will open transportation.
“If we achieve all of this, we will see an additional 2.4 to 2.8 million jobs next year that will allow us to reduce our unemployment rate to 6-8 percent. This will be a gradual reduction. We know that there are some sectors that will not recover as quickly as possible, but this result that we see in the July survey shows that the direction of our policies and our actions are actually paying off, ”Chan said.
“The trend is actually a recovery; We do not expect a U-turn and our assumption is that the vaccine will be available sometime in the middle or third quarter of next year. So, we hope that by 2022, we would have returned to our trajectory, which is around 4 to 5 percent unemployment rate, which is also in our planned target, “he said.
Chua said that the recently approved Bayanihan 2 aid Covid recovery package, the government’s Build, Build, Build program and the 2021 budget will help drive growth and job prospects.
“All three are necessary to preserve current jobs, create new jobs, and prevent families from falling into poverty,” he said.
Chua projected around 1.1 million direct and indirect jobs this year and 1.7 million will be created next year thanks to the Build, Build, Build program.
