CORDILLERA region’s labor force participation rate (LFPR) increased to 62.2 percent in January 2018 compared to the 60.1 percent in the same period last year.
In a statement, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) regional office in the Cordillera said this is equivalent to about 44 million individuals, or six out of 10 Filipinos aged 15 years old and above, who were either employed or unemployed.
Citing the results of the January 2018 Labor Force Survey, PSA Cordillera said employment improved to 96.4 percent in January 2018 from 93.9 percent in January 2017.
Correspondingly, unemployment decreased to 3.6 percent in January 2018 from 6.1 in January 2017.
The rate of underemployment also decreased by 2.5 percentage points to 14.8 percent in January 2018.
The PSA estimated that there were 112,418 underemployed individuals in the region, 51.9 percent of whom were already working 40 hours per week and over.
Of the estimated 757,404 employed persons in Cordillera in January 2018, 61.5 percent or 465,848 individuals were male while 38.5 percent or 291,555 individuals were female.
Employed males in the region increased by 0.6 percentage point to 62.5 percent during the period under review while employed females accounted for 38.5 percent, a decrease of 0.6 percentage point, in the same period.
The service sector employed the most with 42.3 percent share in January 2018 followed by the agriculture industry with 42.2 percent. Industry had the least share at 15.6 percent.
By sub-industry, agriculture, hunting and forestry continued to be the biggest employer in the region with 42.1 percent in January 2018 or about 319,041 workers.
Wholesale and retail trade, repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles ranked as the second largest sub-industry group with 11.7 percent of the total employed persons in the same period in 2018, followed by public administration, defense and compulsory social security with 9.1 percent.
Manufacturing contributed 2.8 percent to the total employment in the region in January 2018.
Northern Mindanao posted the highest LFPR at 72 percent, or about 2.4 million individuals, while the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) had the lowest LFPR of 46.1 percent.