Employment level as well as its quality improved in April this year compared to the same month last year, according to the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA).
The NEDA made this statement after the National Statistics Office (NSO) released the results of the latest Labor Force Survey showing an increase in the country’s employment rate to 92.8 percent from 92.0 percent in April 2010, and a decrease in the unemployment rate to 7.2 percent from last year’s 8.0 percent.
Based on the NSO survey, total employment generation for the period reached 1.41 million, higher than the 416,000 net employment in April 2010.
He also noted that the quality of employment in April this year improved. “This can be seen in the 5.0 percent increase of workers with wages and salaries, 3.5 percent rise of full-time workers, and the decrease of unemployed youth from 18.8 percent last year to 16.6 percent in April 2011,” he said.
Apart from the agriculture sector, the number of newly employed persons in the services sector numbered 632,000, or a 3.4 percent growth from last year. On the other hand, employment growth in the industry sector slowed down to 2.4 percent, or around 130,000 net employment, from last year’s high growth of 7.8 percent.
Paderanga also said that the 2.9 million unemployed persons this year was lower by around 228,000 persons compared to the same period last year. However, the underemployed, or those already working but still expressed the need for more work, went up from 6.3 million (17.8%) in April 2010 to 7.1 million (19.4%) in April 2011.
My reflection to this issue is that it's not easy to drop down the unemployment rate here in the Philippines, in the sense that we are over populated country, we have this minimum wage increase and the lack of education of the people. But according to National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA), the 2011 unemployment rate drops compared to the last 2010. This means that when the unemployment rates drop significantly that means companies are hiring. As the pool of potential employees dwindles you have more competition for the available work force. More competition translates into higher wages since companies only have wages to offer to entice workers. Eventually you could even be close to full employment, meaning there is a labor shortage and potential employers start enticing labor that is employed at other companies to leave there jobs in order to get the higher wages being offered. Eventually this additional labor cost will be reflected in prices for the good or services that the employees produce. We can continually uplift the unemployment here if education is prioritized first by the government, because we are now in a highly competitive country. If we want a good pay, we should have the proper education we need to do our responsibility. But as a Filipino, I am happy for what I've read and I hope this will be the lead and will totally end up the increasing unemployment rate in our country.
