The unemployment rate for May 2022 has increased to 6 percent from 5.7 percent in April, translating to about 2.93 million jobless Filipinos, up from April’s 2.76 million.
The Philippine Statistics Authority said May’s jobless rate was lower than the 7.7 percent recorded in the same month last year.
The underemployment rate also increased to 14.5 percent, higher than May 2021’s 12.3 percent and the 14 percent in April 2022.
The PSA said 94 in every 100 individuals in the labor force were employed in May 2022, higher than the recorded 92.3 percent employment rate from the previous year, but lower than the 94.3 percent in April 2022.
The top five sub-sectors in terms of month-on-month increase in employment from April 2022 to May 2022 are wholesale and retail trade (1.12 million), construction (232,000), fishing and aquaculture (104,000), manufacturing (90,000), and transportation and storage (70,000).
The top sub-sectors on unemployment are agriculture and forestry (-732,000), public administration and defense; compulsory social security (-159,000); arts, entertainment and recreation (-109,000); education (-95,000); and professional, scientific, and technical activities (-51,000).
The wholesale and retail trade, repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles industries had the highest increase in the number of employed individuals with 708,000 employed persons.
The agriculture and forestry industry had the highest decline in employment from May 2021 to May 2022.
In a statement, PSA said 46.08 million out of 49.01 million Filipinos in the labor force 15 years old and over were employed in May 2022, posting an increase of 1.37 million from the 44.72 million employed persons in May 2021.
Economic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan said increasing the employability of the current and future workforce will translate to more job creation and better employment outcomes in the medium term.
However, as the number of self-employed and unpaid family workers increased, the underemployment rate increased to 14.5 percent in May 2022 from 12.3 percent in May 2021, or an equivalent of 1.2 millionadditional underemployed.
The Labor Force Participation Rate was registered at 64.0 percent in May 2022, an estimate lower than the 64.6 percent LFPR in May last year but higher than the 63.4 percent LFPR reported in April 2022.
Mean hours worked of employed individuals in May this year was estimated at 39.8 hours per week, higher than the 39.0 average hours worked per week in May last year, but lower than the 40.1 average hours worked in April 2022.
Rep. Joey Sarte Salceda said the country’s unemployment rate which rose to 6 percent in May indicated that “temporary cash-for-work programs will not address structural issues that hamper jobs growth.”
“Our jobs situation continues to show enduring weaknesses, demonstrating that economic scarring continues to affect key sectors of the economy. I am particularly concerned by the fact that the increase in the number of unemployed persons (770,000) exceeds the number of new members of the labor force (550,000),” Salceda told reporters.
“In other words, not only were we not able to find new jobs for new workers (likely due to the end of academic requirements). We also lost some jobs that already existed in April,” he added.
Salceda, chairman of the House committee on ways and means, said the government needs to be more aggressive with job creation.
“The most obvious area of jobs bleeding is agriculture and forestry, which lost about 733,000 jobs. We employ around a quarter of our labor force in agriculture, but the sector produces just a tenth of economic output,” Salceda said
He added, “taken together, these mean that jobs in that sector are both very weak and very low-paying.”