THE government said the country’s millions of people in the informal sector, or those people who do not have formal employment in companies, and remittances from overseas Filipino workers are keeping the domestic economy afloat in times of global economic crisis.

Teresa Peralta, head of the Bureau of Labor and Employment Statistics, an attached agency of the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), said at least 16.5 million, or about half of the country’s work force, can be considered as self-employed or belonging to the informal sector that also powers the economy.

“We have large important economy and it is during this crisis that our informal economy comes into fore,” Peralta said in a press conference on DOLE’s activities during the celebration of the country’s Independence Day on Friday.

She said those people who were put out of work will have to look for temporary job somewhere else.

For some, she added, they have started to establish their own backyard business.

“These people will not be jobless forever; they need to look for other sources of income to feed their family,” Peralta said, adding that remittances from Filipinos abroad also help buoy the economy.

She said, however, the government has little knowledge on the sector that they do not know the activities involved.

According to latest data from the National Statistics Office, the country’s unemployment rate is 7.7 percent as of January, or about 4.5 million people, up from 7.4 percent last year.

NSO will release its latest data covering the April survey on June 16.

Peralta, however, said her office expects no significant change in the figures.

The NSO data showed that among the regions, the highest unemployment rate was recorded in the NCR at 14 percent. More males, or 64.1 percent of total unemployed, were unemployed than among females of 35.9 percent. By age group, for every 10 unemployed persons, five were in the age group 15-to-24 years, while three were in the age group 25 -to-34.

Across educational groups, about a third of the unemployed were high- school graduates, a fifth were college undergraduates,- and the rest were college graduates.