Enhancing productivity, generating high quality jobs key to robust labor market performance, raising welfare — NEDA

The government reiterates its commitment to enhancing labor productivity and strengthening the push for investments that would generate high-quality jobs for Filipino workers to sustain the robust labor market performance and raise welfare, said the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA).

This comes alongside the continuous improvement of labor outcomes as the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) reported today that the country’s unemployment rate dropped to 4.7 percent in March 2023 from 5.8 percent in the same month last year. A total of 48.58 million persons were estimated to be employed in March 2023, which is 1.61 million higher than the figure recorded in the same period last year.

The country’s labor force participation rate also increased to 66.0 percent, up from 65.4 percent in March 2022. Across industries, the services sector remained the top contributor, with a share of 59.0 percent of the total employed population in March 2023. The agriculture and industry sectors accounted for 23.5 percent and 17.5 percent of the total employed persons, respectively.

Meanwhile, quality of employment also displayed significant gains, year on year. The underemployment rate in March 2023 went down to 11.2 percent from 15.8 percent in the same month last year, the lowest underemployment rate reported since April 2005.

In order to sustainably raise wages and improve worker welfare, NEDA Secretary Arsenio M. Balisacan emphasized that the government is addressing persistent issues and constraints to improving labor productivity and high-quality job generation.

“Passing major economic liberalization reforms is a critical first step. However, in a region where our neighbors are also aggressively competing for investments, we must leverage on these changes to the country’s policy regime by ensuring that we urgently address on-the-ground concerns related to the ease of doing business. Investors must not be kept waiting – we must create an enabling regulatory environment that makes it easy for them to set up shop, expand, and generate the high-quality jobs we need,” he added.

In addition, as the government pursues its infrastructure drive through the Infrastructure Flagship Projects or IFPs under the Build-Better-More program, significant and sustained improvements in human capital will be needed to complement the productivity gains from investments in physical capital.

“Improving the country’s health, nutrition, and education-related outcomes will be key to maintaining the competitiveness of the country’s labor force relative to those of its Southeast Asian neighbors. Investments in human capital will ensure that the growing working-age population will be able to maximize the job, market, and technological opportunities made available to it and allow the country to reap the benefits of the demographic dividend,” said the NEDA Chief.

Establishing a dynamic innovation ecosystem that encourages businesses to introduce new products and processes to the market is also expected to create better-paying job opportunities in higher value-added industries (see Chapter 8 of the Philippine Development Plan 2023-2028, on Advancing Research and Development, Technology, and Innovation).

Also crucial will be collaboration among government agencies, training institutions, technology providers, and other stakeholders to explore and utilize new technologies toward upskilling and reskilling on digital technology and innovations, as embodied in the Philippine Digital Workforce Competitiveness Act (RA 11927).

“Regulatory reforms, strategic investments in human capital, a flourishing innovation ecosystem – these are some of the much-needed elements that will enable us to sustain the gains we see in our labor market as we work towards raising overall welfare and meeting our medium-term socioeconomic goals,” Balisacan added.