Denis Santos
As January commences, a new record-breaking rate of jobless Filipinos was tallied.
Philippine Statistics Agency released the official data on Tuesday. The unemployment rate this month was increased to 6.6 percent from October’s 4.7% (2.04 million Filipinos).
According to Economic Planning Secretary, Ernesto Pernia, that because of the damage brought by the typhoons Nina and Auring, employment losses are greatly affected. Due to these disasters, it is accountable for the approximately 882,000 or roughly two-thirds jobless citizens that affected the unemployment factors.
Pernia said in a statement,
The government must focus interventions to diversify the sources of income of our workers in the agriculture sector, increase labor participation of women, and address youth unemployment and underutilization.”
As the unemployment rate increases, obviously, the employment rate decreases. 39.3 million Filipinos were employed as of January, down from October’s 41.7 million.
However, the underemployment rate also decreases. Dropping 6.39 million in January from 7.51 million in October. These workers worked for less than 40 hours a week. Most jobs that underemployed workers get are in services and agriculture sectors.
