Almost half of the country's adult labor force are jobless — a record-high in eight years — a special survey by the Social Weather Stations showed Sunday.
The July 3-6, 2020 National Mobile Phone Survey found adult joblessness at 45.5 percent of the adult labor force, a new record-high since the 34.4 percent in March 2012.
This was also a 28-point increase from the 17.5 percent recorded in December 2019.
SWS said half of the respondents lost their jobs or livelihold during the COVID-19 crisis.
The estimated numbers of jobless adults hit 27.3 million in July 2020 compared to 7.9 million in December 2019.
SWS defines the labor force as adults (18 years and above) presently with a job plus those looking for a job.
The Labor Force Participation Rate is the proportion of adults in the labor force.
The July 2020 survey found the adult Labor Force Participation Rate at 86.4 percent for an estimated 60 million adults. This used to be 68.7 percent in December 2019 for an estimated 45.5 million adults.
Adults who are jobless consists of those who (a) voluntarily left their old jobs, (b) are seeking jobs for the first time, or (c) lost their jobs due to economic circumstances beyond their control.
The SWS survey was a probability-based survey conducted using mobile phone and computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) of 1,555 adult Filipinos (18 years old and above) nationwide.
It has a sampling error margins of ±2% for national percentages, ±6% for Metro Manila, ±5 for Balance Luzon, ±5% for the Visayas, and ±5% for Mindanao.