Employment rate in Central Visayas jumps to 94.8%
Hundreds of job seekers line up to avail the SM City Job Fair in connection with the 2014 Labor Day celebration. (CDN PHOTO/JUNJIE MENDOZA)
CEBU CITY, Philippines – The number of employed individuals in Central Visayas has improved as businesses gradually reopen and commercial activities resume two years since the pandemic occurred.
Based on recent data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), the unemployment rate in Central Visayas as of April 2022 eased to 5.2 percent.
This is a drop from the 8 percent posted last January. It is also three points lower compared to the 8.2 percent recorded in April 2021.
With a decline in unemployment, Central Visayas also saw an increase in the employment rate from 92 percent to 94.8 percent.
The same report from PSA showed that Central Visayas’ labor force participation has also risen from 60 to 66.1 percent, from January to April.
This means that out of the roughly 5.6 million individuals aged 15 years old and above in the region, 3.7 million of them are already employed as of April.
Central Visayas’ underemployment rate, which refers to employees who are looking for longer working hours and higher-paying jobs, also decreased.
From 16.4 percent in January, it slid down to 10.6 percent in April.
Nationwide, the unemployment rate has improved from 8.7 percent in April 2021 to 5.7 percent in April 2022, said National Statistician Dennis Mapa in a summarized report.
However, joblessness remained higher than the 14-year low of 2.3 million in 2019 (pre-pandemic).
Among the 17 regions in the country, Zamboanga Peninsula posted the highest number of employed individuals when its employment rate reached 97.1 percent as of April 2022.
Meanwhile, Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) posted the lowest employment rate at 91.9 percent.
According to PSA, the top sectors with the highest increase in employment are the administration and support service activities, accommodation and food service activities, transportation and storage, agriculture and forestry, and construction. / with reports from the Philippine Daily Inquirer
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