THE double-digit underemployment rate persists because the country’s agriculture sector remains backward, the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) said on Tuesday.
Neda Undersecretary for Planning and Policy Rosemarie G. Edillon told reporters in a news briefing that the country’s high underemployment rate “warrants attention.” “When you talk about underemployment, it’s largely the problem of the agriculture sector,” Edillon said. “What we should be doing really is to create other job options. That is what the government is doing.”
Earlier, the Sugar Regulatory Administration attributed the delay in planting to the lack of sugarcane cutters who have decided to shift to construction jobs created by the government’s “Build, Build, Build” program.
The Associated Labor Union-Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (ALU-TUCP) has also expressed concern over the high underemployment rate.
“It means there are jobs and there are work opportunities but there are still jobs-skills mismatch, poor wages and poor security of tenure, poor social protection benefits and insurance,” ALU-TUCP Spokesman Alan Tanjusay said.
Julius Cainglet of the Federation of Free Workers said the increase in underemployment rate reflects the “prevalence” of contractual workers, who receive low wages and insufficient benefits. “The increase in the underemployed underscores the government’s failure to stop labor contractualization.”
The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) reported that the country’s underemployment rate rose to 17 percent in April, from last year’s 16.1 percent. This represented 6.93 million Filipinos in April, an increase of nearly 500,000 from 6.47 million recorded a year ago.
The PSA said underemployed Filipinos are employed persons who express the desire to have additional hours of work in their present job, or to have additional job, or to have a new job with longer working hours.
Data showed that 32.4 percent of the underemployed are engaged in agriculture; 47.1 percent in services; and 20.5 percent in industry. Further, more than half of these underemployed workers are considered visibly underemployed or those working for less than 40 hours a week.
The PSA said around 52.5 percent are visibly underemployed and 46.1 percent worked 40 hours or more. Those who worked for over 40 hours a week increased significantly from 37.7 percent in April 2017.
Edillon said this is why it is important for the government to create jobs, even those outside of the farm sector to improve the lives of those engaged in agriculture.
“Sometimes the jobs created outside of agriculture did not match with workers in agriculture and so an important intervention is to improve their employability,” Edillon said.
Lower jobless rate
Data from the PSA showed that the unemployment rate slowed to 5.5 percent, the lowest in 10 years. The Neda attributed this to the infrastructure build-up of the government and the private sector.
The industry sector recorded a strong employment growth rate of 8.1 percent or 605,000 workers, increasing its total employment share to 19.7 percent, the largest in the past decade.
The Neda said the construction subsector is the biggest contributor to employment, generating 468,000 jobs, among the industry subsectors during the period.
“Employment grew partly due to increased infrastructure spending as the Department of Public Works and Highways’s road projects and rehabilitation of public school facilities are already underway nationwide,” Neda Officer in Charge and Undersecretary Jose Miguel R. de la Rosa said.
“We are now seeing the contribution of the ‘Build, Build, Build’ campaign in terms of job generation. We can expect the demand for workers in the sector to grow further as more projects break ground,” he added.
Former Labor Undersecretary Rene E. Ofreneo agreed with the government’s assessment that the BBB boosted employment rate in April.
“Since ‘Build, Build, Build’ started it was able to generate additional jobs. Other contributors to employment include the boom in the real estate and services,” Ofreneo told the BusinessMirror in a phone interview.
Ofreneo said the recently concluded Barangay and Sanggunigang Kabataan elections last month may have also contributed to jobs generation. “But its effect is probably not that much compared to the national elections.” Cainglet said, however, that the number of displaced workers due to the closure of Boracay Island in April will “significantly raise” the
jobless rate later this year.
With Cai U. Ordinario
Image credits: Nonie Reyes