More than half, or 54.7 percent, of firms employ workers through agencies, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).
Based on the 2015/2016 Integrated Survey on Labor and Employment, around 17,094 firms of the 31,277 nationwide make use of service agreements and do not include these workers in their establishment’s total employment.
“Workers employed by contractors to perform or complete a job, work or service pursuant to a service agreement within the premises of the establishment,” the PSA said.
Agency-hired workers refer to workers hired through contractors. They are excluded from firm’s total employment.
PSA data showed around 691,341 employees, or 13.6 percent of the 5.076 million employed workers in June 2016, were agency workers.
In terms of industries, the biggest number of agency-hired workers at 311,722, or 45.1 percent of total agency-hired workers reported in 2016, were employed in manufacturing.
“This means that roughly two in every five agency- hired workers were engaged in manufacturing activities,” the PSA said.
The wholesale and retail-trade industry only ranked a distant second with 93,867, or 13.6 percent of total agency-hired workers.
Many agency-hired workers were employed in transportation and storage at 5.6 percent, or 38,511 firms; accommodation and food service activities, 5.5 percent, or 38,148 firms; and administrative and support-services activities, 4.6 percent, or 32,027 firms.
However, the presence of agency-hired workers were less visible in the repair of computers and personal and household goods, and other personal service activities with only 1,078 firms employing agency workers.
Other industries with low numbers of agency workers were water supply, sewerage, waste management and remediation activities at 1,843 firms and the arts, entertainment and recreation at 7,171 firms.
The PSA said that the total share of agency workers employed in these industries was only less than one percent.
The ISLE is a nationwide sample survey covering agricultural and non-agricultural establishments with 20 or more workers. The survey’s reference month is June of the survey year. The latest survey, 2015/2016 ISLE, covered 12,926 establishments.
This issue presents statistics on the extent to which firms or establishments across industry groups resort to agency-hired workers to augment their workforce and the types of jobs/services outsourced by firms to manpower agencies.