DAVAO CITY (MindaNews / 11 April)—The employment rate in the country was reported at 95.2% in February, data released Tuesday by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) said.
This translates to an estimated 48.80 million individuals employed across the country.
The PSA report said that the employment rate in February 2023 was higher compared with the 93.6% or equivalent to 45.48 million workers recorded in the same period a year ago.
Although the 95.2% employment rates for both January and February 2023 were higher than during the same periods last year, they were, however, lower than the last quarter of 2022—95.5% in October, 95.8% in November, and 95.7% in December.
The PSA also reported that the unemployment rate for February 2023 stood at 4.8%.
Meanwhile, the underemployment rate, the “number of underemployed persons or those employed persons who expressed 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 hours of work,” was recorded at 12.9 percent or 6.29 million of the total workers in February, according to the agency.
The PSA reported that the enterprises in the services sector employed the most number of workers, consistently dominating the labor market with a 59.6% share to the total employed population last February.
The agriculture and industry sectors came in at second and third, accounting for 24.1% and 16.3% of the total employed persons, respectively, according to the PSA.
The agency reported that the top five sub-sectors with the highest year-on-year change in the number of employed persons were wholesale and retail trade, repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles with 701,000, accommodation and food service activities with 580,000, agriculture and forestry with 554,000, other service activities with 362,000, and fishing and aquaculture with 340,000.
On the other hand, human health and social work activities, construction, mining and quarrying, information and communication, and manufacturing reported the biggest drop in terms of employment generation.
The wage and salary workers comprised the largest segment of the country’s total employment population 15 years old and over at 60.9%. This was followed by self-employed persons without any paid employees at 27.2%, unpaid family workers at 9.8%, and family-operated farms or businesses at 2.1%.
No regional employment rate was provided for February.
In Davao region, the employment rate in Davao Region stood at 95.1% last January. The underemployment rate was noted at 6.3%.
The agency reported that the Labor Force Participation Rate (LFPR) during this period stood at 63.2%, which accounted for 2.37 million workers. (Antonio L. Colina IV / MindaNews)
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