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Philippines: Unemployment rate eased in January despite pandemic curbs
MANILA, Philippines (Update 1, 11:09 a.m.) — There were fewer jobless Filipinos in January despite renewed mobility curbs back then to arrest the spread of Omicron variant. But one analyst said the figures are not telling a good news, stressing that prolonged pandemic hardships are prompting people to quit job-hunting.
Results of the Philippine Statistics Authority’s Labor Force Survey found that unemployment slid down 6.4% from a rate of 6.6% in December last year.
This translates to 2.93 million unemployed Filipinos in January, when restrictions were retightened following another surge in infections triggered by the highly infectious Omicron variant.
Despite the drop, data showed the available jobs were low quality. Underemployment, the proportion of workers looking for more working hours to augment their income, went up to 14.9% in January from 14.7% in December. That was equivalent to 6.40 million underemployed Filipinos at the start of the year.
Sought for comment, Leonardo Lanzona, labor economist at Ateneo De Manila University, said that, “on the whole, the prospects are not very promising to me.”
“It seems to me that the lower unemployment can be attributed to two factors. One is that lesser people are looking for work, resulting in the lower sample size,” Lanzona said.
“Second, the limited government subsidies have forced people to find work despite the obvious risks from the Omicron surge. The higher underemployment indicates that even though the compensation is not enough to meet their necessities the workers were willing to accept any job offer,” he added.
In total, 45.9 million Filipinos were part of the labor force or those people aged 15 years and up actively looking for work, up from 45.21 million in December. But compared to October last year, when the labor force was estimated at 47.33 million, the January figure was lower.
“Restrictions have a huge impact here. If there are restrictions, the labor force participation rate feels the impact first,” National Statistician Claire Dennis Mapa said in a virtual press conference.
Moving forward, Jun Neri, lead economist at Bank of the Philippine Islands, said “we continue to believe that we will get closer to pre-pandemic employment figures by end-2022 especially if we get favorable, market-friendly results in the coming Presidential elections.”
“We will likely see a sub-6% unemployment print by the same period next year. Inflation could be the bigger problem by then especially if we don’t see any meaningful adjustments to monetary policy throughout the year,” Neri added.
Source: https://www.philstar.com/business/2022/03/18/2168182/unemployment-rate-eased-january-despite-pandemic-curbs