Labor Secretary Bienvenido Laguesma issued a statement on Wednesday regarding the July 2025 Labor Force Survey (LFS) results, associating the declining employment rate with “weather shocks.”
“The decline in the employment rate may be attributed to multiple tropical cyclones and an enhanced southwest monsoon, which caused widespread flooding, landslides, infrastructure damage, and operational halts across significant portions of the country, particularly in the Luzon regions like Ilocos, La Union, Pangasinan, and others,” read the statement posted by the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE).
Citing the July report of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC), Laguesma said that over 200,000 families across regions were affected.
He added that inclement weather resulted in work and class suspensions in cities and municipalities, which directly halted business operations, employment, and livelihood in sectors like agriculture, construction, fishing, and retail.
“These events contributed to temporary job losses, reduced working hours or inability to work (reflected in the underemployment rate rising to 14.8 percent), and people opting out of the labor force due to safety concerns, displacement, or inaccessible workplaces,” the statement read.
“Agriculture and informal sectors, which employ a large portion of the workforce, are particularly vulnerable to such weather shocks, as seen in similar patterns during past monsoon seasons,” it added.
The Labor Secretary made the statement after the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) reported that the employment rate in July 2025 dropped to 94.7 percent from 95.3 percent in July of the previous year and in April 2025 at 95.9 percent.
