Finance Secretary Ralph Recto expressed the government’s commitment to ensuring that the country’s robust economic growth reaches every Filipino citizen.
“Our main focus now is sustaining this momentum for the Philippines to graduate into an upper middle-income status by next year and reduce the poverty rate to only 9 percent by the end of the President’s term,” Recto said.
“We are working doubly hard to ensure that all Filipinos reap the rewards of strong economic growth through more comfortable lives and more high-quality jobs,” he added.
Recto said the country’s historic high Gross National Income (GNI) per capita of $4,230 in 2023 signifies profound improvements in the standard of living of Filipinos as more and better economic opportunities are available for them.
“Achieving this all-time high GNI per capita reflects the Philippines’ robust economic growth and strong macroeconomic fundamentals,” he said.
GNI per capita measures the economic output per citizen, including both domestic and international earnings. A higher GNI per capita means greater economic prosperity and an increased standard of living.
The World Bank defines upper-middle-income countries as those with GNI per capita ranging between $4,516 and $14,005 for the fiscal year 2025.
Besides the historic GNI per capita, Recto said the country’s increasingly robust labor market and better job quality solidify the Philippines’ positive trajectory toward reaching an upper middle-income status by 2025 and a single-digit poverty rate by 2028.
“We are seeing encouraging signs that our economic goals are on track and within reach on the back of the continued improvements in the labor market and after we reached a record-high GNI per capita last year,” Recto said.
The Labor Force Survey (LFS) in May 2024 showed that the country’s job market remained robust with the unemployment rate dropping to 4.1 percent from 4.3 percent in the same period last year. This translates to 61,000 fewer unemployed individuals.
Filipinos engaged in more quality jobs are also growing as underemployment fell to 9.9 percent in May, the lowest since April 2005.
This improvement in the quality of employment is evident in the current landscape of the labor class in the country, with wage and salary workers continuing to contribute the largest share of the total employed individuals at 63.0 percent (30.8 million) in May.
Private sector establishments provided the majority of the boost with an additional 1.6 million increase in wage and salary workers for the month compared to May 2023.
Among the wage and salary workers, private establishments employed 77.3 percent (23.8 million), while the public sector composed 15.3 percent (4.7 million).
The services sector continued to provide the most jobs for the month, accounting for 60.1 percent (29.4 million) of the employed population. This was followed by agriculture (20.8 percent or 10.2 million) and industry (19.1 percent or 9.3 million) sectors.
The construction and manufacturing subsectors grew significantly in May, adding 745,000 and 347,000 jobs, respectively, on the back of the aggressive rollout of the “Build, Better, More” program.
