10-YEAR-HIGH
More Filipinos gained jobs in July as the employment rate inched up to a 10-year high of 94.6 percent, the government reported on Wednesday.
The Philippine Statistics Authority’s July 2018 Labor Force Survey showed that the rate of employed among those in the labor force, composed of those 15 years old and above, increased from 94.4 percent a year ago.
In a statement, the state planning agency National Economic and Development Authority said the higher jobs rate last July translated into net generated employment of about 488,000, bringing the total employment to 40.7 million to date.
“An average of 1.17 million additional employment has been created so far in the first three rounds of the Labor Force Survey [this year]. And this puts the government on track in meeting itstarget of 900,000 to 1.1 million employment generation for 2018,” Socioeconomic Planning Secretary and Neda chief Ernesto M. Pernia said in a statement.
“With remarkable improvements, the government should not let up on its efforts to continually improve the employment situation in the country,” Pernia added.
Separately, Budget Secretary Benjamin E. Diokno told reporters that the ambitious “Build, Build, Build” infrastructure program is expected to create more employment opportunities moving forward.
“In the employment figure last April, we created something like 600,000 plus jobs and a big chunk of that is construction workers. With our ‘Build, Build, Build’ going full blast, we’re going to create a lot of jobs,” Diokno noted.
“So that’s good—people will be more tolerant of rising prices if they have jobs rather than being jobless,” Diokno added.