Unemployment rate down to 6.5% in July

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Unemployment rate down to 6.5% in July

AFP

For the rest of 2015, the country is on a par in terms of achieving the Philippine Development Plan target of 6.6%-6.8% for unemployment, says NEDA

MANILA, Philippines – The country’s unemployment rate eased to 6.5% in July 2015, from  6.7% in July 2014, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) reported on Wednesday, September 9.

“The favorable economic growth of the country certainly drove an encouraging response from the labor market in July 2015. This follows a similar trend in January and April 2015 where unemployment also declined relative to 2014,” said Socio-economic Planning Secretary Arsenio M. Balisacan.

For the rest of the year, the country is on a par in terms of achieving the Philippine Development Plan (PDP) target of 6.6%-6.8% for unemployment.

Meanwhile, underemployment increased to 20.8% relative to the 18.3% registered in the same period in 2014.

“The rise in underemployment for the period has been driven by full-time workers who still want additional hours of work, whereas the number of underemployed part-time workers actually decreased by 6%, accounting for 263,000 people,” said Balisacan, who is National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) chief.   

Despite these challenges, positive shifts were mostly noted in the labor market. Mean hours of work significantly improved indicating that economic activity has picked-up for the period, the NEDA noted.

Jobs generator

The services sector, which makes up more than half of the total employed, continues to be the top jobs generator.

This is followed by the industry sector, backed by strong public and private construction.

A broad-based increase in the number of full-time workers was likewise observed across majority of the production sectors, coupled with a significant decrease in the number of part-time workers.

More remunerative and stable wage and salary jobs also increased by 1.5 million, of which 1.1 million workers were from private establishments, NEDA noted.

Not enough

Despite the stellar performance of the services and industry sectors, the Cabinet official noted that these were not enough to offset the debilitating impact of El Niño on the agriculture sector.

“Partly affected by the prolonged dry spell and drought being experienced in some production areas, the sector recorded 877,000 net employment losses in July 2015,” said Balisacan.

He noted that  the improvement in the wage and salary jobs and in the number of full-time workers imply that previous agriculture workers may have obtained stable full-time jobs, and mostly wage and salary employment for the period, mostly in services.

Thus, Balisacan said the government must ensure that raising both the level and quality of employment and gains are sustained. 

Citing the likely stronger impact of El Niño on the economy in the coming months, Balisacan stressed the importance of a well-coordinated, direct, and proactive set of mitigating measures for affected workers in the agriculture sector.

The Roadmap to Address the Impact of El Niño (RAIN) is currently being drafted by NEDA, as the lead agency in the Task Force on El Niño.

“Over the medium-term, government efforts should help lift the constraints to sustained, decent, and quality job-generating growth by increasing competition and reducing the cost of doing business,” Balisacan said. – Rappler.com

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