The government missed its target of reducing the unemployment rate to between 5.1 and 5.4 percent as more than half-a-million jobs were lost last year, the National Economic and Development Authority said Tuesday.
Preliminary Neda estimates showed the national unemployment rate registered 5.7 percent in 2017 from 5.5 percent in 2016.
Economic Planning Undersecretary Rosemarie Edillon said in a briefing while the current unemployment rate had improved compared to previous decades, “we are still behind the 5.1 to 5.4-percent target that we have set in 2017.”
“Also, employment creation remains a challenge as there were more than 650,000 net employment losses in 2017, far from the target of increasing employment to 900,000 to 1.1 million per year,” Edillon said.
Unemployment rate is one of the core indicators of the government’s Philippine Development Plan 2017-2022 that promises to lay down the foundation for inclusive growth, a high-trust and resilient society and a globally-competitive knowledge economy.
Under the plan, unemployment rate is targeted to decrease eventually to 4.7 percent to 5.3 percent this year, and 4.3 percent to 5.3 percent in 2019.
Data also showed that the youth unemployment rate, another core indicator, for the full of 2017 stood at 14.4 percent against the target of 11.0 percent.
The underemployment rate in areas outside the capital region, however, decreased and settled at 17.4 percent in 2017, down from 19.7 percent in 2016.
“We have exceeded the target of 18.3 to 20.3 percent underemployment rate target that we have set for the year. This is consistent with our objective of making sure that development outside NCR also progresses.” Edillon said.
The gross national income or GNI per capita grew at a rate of 6.5 percent for 2017, which already exceeded the 4.5 percent target set for the year.
The data for poverty, rural poverty, and subsistence incidence were not available in 2017. Edillon said the 2018 poverty data would be released sometime in 2019.
Meanwhile, food inflation increased from 2.6 percent in 2016 to 3.7 percent in 2017, but still remained within the target for the period.