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| The lockdown of Luzon, including Metro Manila, accounted for much of the record drop in unemployment |
The coronavirus pandemic and the community lockdown to keep
the contagion in check have left 7.3 million Filipinos jobless, resulting in
the country’s highest unemployment rate ever of 17.7%, Labor Secretary
Silvestre H. Bello III said today, Jun 5.
The lockdown during
the community quarantine from March to May also caused a huge 55.6% drop in the
labor force participation rate, the biggest fall in the history of the Philippine
labor market, Bello
Commenting on the Department of Labor and Employment’s April
Labor Force Survey, Bello said that the unemployment
rate this time surpassed the 10.3% rate during the 1998 recession in the Philippines
It also surpassed the previously highest unemployment record
of 14.4%, posted in the second quarter of 1991.
“The lockdown during the community quarantine from March to
May, which is supposed to be the period for job hunting of our fresh graduates,
has put the labor force at a standstill as two-thirds of the economy is shut
down,” Bello said.
According to National Statistician Dennis Mapa, unemployment
was only at 5.3% in January 2020, or 2.4 million people, and 5.1% in April
2019, or 2.3 million
After January 2020, an additional 4.9 million people became
jobless. This was in line with Dole's estimate that 5 million more jobs would be lost due to
the pandemic.
The community quarantine forced hundreds of thousands of
establishments to resort to temporary closures or flexible work arrangements,
while the global economic decline left hundreds of thousands of Filipino overseas without
jobs.
As a result, millions of workers were affected in the
formal, informal and overseas sectors, Bello
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| OFWs who lost their jobs because of the pandemic also contributed to the steep rise in the jobless rate |
The Philippine Statistics Authority placed the figure of
employed workers who had to stop working due to the lockdown at 38.4%.
Metro Manila
The country’s employment rate fell to 82.3%, from 94.7% in
January 2020 and 94.9% in April 2019.
Underemployment, or people who have jobs but are looking for
more to meet their needs, rose to 18.9% in April from the 13.4% in the same
month last year. This represents 6.4 million workers or an additional 781,000
people looking for more jobs.
The labor force participation rate among Filipinos 15 years
and older is estimated at 55.6%, the lowest since 1987, when data was first
available.
All regions reported double-digit unemployment rates in
April 2020, with the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao suffering
the worst at 29.8%.
The arts, entertainment, and recreation sector was hit the
most, where 54% of workers lost their jobs. From 436,000 in April 2019, the
number of workers in the industry fell to only 200,000 workers in April 2020.
The second highest decline was in the electricity, gas,
steam, and air-conditioning supply sector, which recorded a 43.1% drop. From
108,000 workers, only 61,000 were employed in April 2020.
