Jobless Pinoys rise to 2.22M in Dec 2022

DESPITE the busy holidays, the number of Filipinos who have no jobs rose to 2.22 million in December 2022, from 2.18 million in November of the same year.

This means the  country’s joblessness rate soared to 4.3 percent in December 2022, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) said Wednesday.

This is the second-lowest unemployment rate in 17 years. The lowest unemployment rate was 4.2 percent, reported in November 2022.

The report comes after the statistics department reported a 14-year high 8.7 inflation rate in January.

PSA National Statistician and Undersecretary Dennis Mapa said the increase in the unemployment rate in December was  “[statistically] not significant.”

He said the December 2022 unemployment rate was lower than the rate for the same month in 2021, which was 6.6 percent.

Mapa also said the country’s employment rate is estimated to have been 95.7 percent in December 2022. This is slightly less than the 95.8 percent employment rate in November 2022. However, this is higher than the employment rate documented for December 2021, which was 93.4 percent. 

The December 2022 employment rate translated to 49 million working Filipinos who are 15 years old or older, it said.

Lower underemployment rate

According to PSA, the rate of underemployment in December 2022 dropped to 12.6 percent from 14.4 percent in November. This was a decrease from the rate reported during the same period in 2021, which stood at 14.7 percent. 

“This is actually significantly different [compared to employment and unemployment rate]. There is actually a significant decrease in the percentage of the underemployment rate, including the number,” Mapa said in mixed English and Filipino.

The December underemployment rate translates to 6.20 million people who are currently employed and have indicated that they would like to either have the opportunity to work additional hours in their current job, have the opportunity to work additional jobs, or have the opportunity to have a new job with long hours of work in.

The number of underemployed individuals in November 2022 was 7.16 million.  

However, Mapa added that it is also “possible” that more Filipinos will report that they are underemployed or unemployed in the subsequent labor force surveys since the holiday season is over.

Fewer workers

The sectors with the highest drop in employment are the following:

• Manufacturing, -585,000
• Wholesale and retail trade, repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles, -387,000
• Accommodation and food service activities, -240,000
• Human health and social work activities -239,000
• Real estate activities -168,000

These same sectors also contributed to the underemployment rate in December.

More workers

On the other hand, the sectors that had the highest increase in the number of employees in December 2022 are the following: 

• Agriculture and forestry, 829,000
• Fishing and aquaculture, 291,000
• Administrative and support service activities, 257,000
• Construction, 138,000
• Other service activities, 12,000

The PSA also noted that the services sector continued to lead all other sectors with the biggest percentage of the working population in December 2022, accounting for 58.9 percent of the total number of employees. 

The percentage of people who found employment in the agricultural sector was 24 percent, while the percentage of people who joined the industrial sector workforce was 17.1 percent, it said.

Improving job quality, hours

The PSA likewise said that despite an uptick in the unemployment rate in the country in December, there were more quality jobs in the country. 

In December 2022, data showed that Filipino employees worked for an average of 40.3 hours per week, up from 39.3 hours in November 2022 and 39.7 in December 2021, it said.