More Filipinos were employed this year which is 2.0 percent higher compared to 2017, the Department of Labor and Employment said.
Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III said that more workers are now enjoying stable employment for 2018, after President Rodrigo Duterte signed an executive order stopping illegal contractualization.
Based on the October 2018 Labor Force Survey conducted by the Philippine Statistics Authority, 826,000 jobs were generated for 2018, making a total of 41.160-million employed workers, which is 2.0 percent higher than the 40.334-million employed workers recorded last year.
“The employment situation in the Philippines continues to improve as more Filipinos are getting employed through increased job opportunities in various sectors, such as the Build Build Build infrastructure program of the administration. This mainly helped us sustain the rise in employment. Also, more workers are now enjoying security of tenure,” Bello said.
Also, unemployed Filipinos decreased by 140,000, a 5.3 percent or 0.4-percent decrease from the 5.7-percent unemployment rate recorded last year.
The October 2018 LFS also noted improvements in the quality of employment as the number of remunerative and stable wage employment reached 26.6 million, which is 2.9 percent or 743,000 wage employment compared to the same period in 2017.
Full-time employment also grew by 4.7 percent, reaching 29.3 million in October 2018, from 28.0 million last year.
As of October 2018, DOLE’s campaign against illegal forms of contractualization has so far resulted in 411,449 regularized workers, 70 percent of whom have been voluntarily regularized while the 30 percent were regularized through inspection.
“This can be attributed to DOLE’s strict enforcement of campaign against illegal contractualization, as well as to the department’s strengthened employment facilitation services and enhanced social protection programs for our workers,” Bello said.
However, underemployment remains a challenge with 6.735-million underemployed workers in 2018, a 3.5 percent or 229,000 higher from the 6.506-million underemployed workers reported last year.