THE Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) has recorded an upward trend in the country’s unemployment rate which stood at 4.1 percent in May, the PSA said Monday, July 8, 2024.
In a statement, the PSA said the country’s total workforce as of May 2024 was at 50.97 million Filipinos aged 15 years old and above, higher than the 50.40 million during the month prior.
Of this figure, 2.11 were jobless while 95.9 percent or 48.87 million are employed.
The number of underemployed individuals or those who are employed but wanted additional hours of work in their current job or to have an additional job or to have a new job with longer hours went down to 9.9 percent in May 2024 from 11.7 percent in May 2023 and 14.6 percent in April 2024.
The average weekly hours of an employed individual in May 2024 was recorded at 40.6 hours per week, higher than the 39.3 hours per week recorded in May 2023 and 40.5 hours per week in April 2024.
The service sector still has the most number of employed individuals with 60.1 out of the total labor workforce followed by the agriculture and industry sectors with 20.8 percentage share.
The top five sub-sectors in terms of annual increase in the number of employed persons in May 2024 were construction, administrative and support service activities, manufacturing, transportation, storage and public administration, and defense and compulsory social security.
The five sub-sectors with the highest annual decreases in the number of employed persons were agriculture and forestry, fishing and aquaculture, arts, entertainment and recreation, real estate activities, and professional, scientific, and technical activities.
Of the total employed persons, 63 percent were wage and salary workers while 27.9 percent were self-employed without any paid employees, 7.3 percent unpaid family workers and 1.3 percent are employers in a family-owned or family-operated farm or business. (TPM/SunStar Philippines)