Joblessness climbs; quality worsens

PHILIPPINES - In Brief 09 Mar 2021 by Romeo Bernardo

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January’s Labor Force Survey (LFS) showed the country’s employment rate staying at 91.3%, same as last quarter, but with the share of the underemployed rising to 16% from 14.4%. Combined with an unemployment rate of 8.7%, joblessness rose to 23.3% in January from 21.9% last quarter. Although the economy created over 1.4 million jobs over the three-month period, almost 80% of these was classified as “elementary” occupations with professional and managerial posts declining. The mean hours worked per workweek fell below 40 hours.Compared with year-ago pre-pandemic data, the economy shed close to 1.3 million jobs, with underlying data presenting a grimmer employment picture:Combined job losses in the industrial and services sectors totaled over 1.7 million, with lower productivity agriculture absorbing some of the excess labor. Noteworthy is the 495k job losses in manufacturing. Close to 1.9 million “wage and salary” workers lost their jobs, with rising informality, again associated with lower productivity, seen in higher “own account” workersYouth unemployment was close to 20% from less than 14% last year.Moreover, high joblessness has led to increased hunger incidence which almost doubled from 8.8% of households pre-pandemic to 16% now and is especially worrisome in households with pregnant women and children. In a presentation before the business community, the Cabinet Secretary and co-chair of the Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases reported that over a fifth of children below 5 years old lost weight during the pandemic. We understand that the executive and lawmakers are in discussions on another possible round of cash support (“ayuda“), similar to ...