Where did Iloilo City’s 6.1% growth actually go?

By Francis Allan L. Angelo

Iloilo City’s economy grew 6.1% in 2025. Yet fewer residents actually had jobs.

Those figures come from the Institute of Contemporary Economics, specifically its latest study, “From Production to Capability,” released this month. It measures on-the-ground reality in 82 provinces and 33 highly urbanized cities.

The study picks up where the Philippine Statistics Authority leaves off and asks a simpler question. After a city produces more, who gets the money?

For Iloilo City, the answer is not the residents. Resident employment slipped 0.1%. Meanwhile, output per worker rose 6.2%. The study calls this “productivity-rich, job-poor growth.”

Between 2023 and 2025, real family income here grew 5.4 percentage points slower than local production. That gap drags the city into the study’s bottom quartile. Families also kept less of what they earned. Their leftover income after expenses fell 3 percentage points.

Iloilo province fared similarly. It posted 5.9% growth. But family incomes lagged behind output, and household margins shrank by 1.5 points.

We understand why City Hall and the Provincial Capital kept these numbers out of the press releases. What escapes us is why the growth figure alone still passes for good news.

Western Visayas perfectly mirrors the national picture.

Six local economies show where the chain between growth and better lives breaks. Ironically, the one local economy nationwide passing every test grew the slowest. Aklan expanded by a mere 3.3%. That is exactly the point.

Its employment rose 1.6%. Real family incomes climbed about 20.2% over two years. Families kept more money after expenses. The poorest 30% outpaced the average. Inequality shrank, and poverty fell 4.6 percentage points.

ICE names Aklan the only economy among 115 to clear its strict screening. They frame this as a benchmark of alignment rather than a ranking.

Now look at its faster-growing neighbors.

Antique posted 8.6% growth but lost 2.4% of its resident jobs. Capiz grew 8.7% and Guimaras 8.0%. Both failed the distribution test. In Guimaras, the poorest 30% saw their incomes grow 20 percentage points slower than the provincial average. Its inequality worsened.

This is not a regional quirk, as the national data proves it. Out of 115 local economies, 109 grew in 2025. Yet 52 of those growing economies shed resident jobs.

We see comparable household data for 113 economies. In 55 of them, family incomes grew slower than local GDP. In 79, spending outpaced income. Average real family income rose about 10.4%. Real family expenditure surged 16.0%.

The country is producing more. Households are keeping less.

The chain has one more link and Iloilo City fails this test as well. Functional literacy in the city stands at 70.7%. That is 6.4 percentage points below what local household resources and the regional setting predict. This lands Iloilo City among 15 “strong underconverters” nationwide.

Nationally, basic literacy averages 89.6%. Functional literacy trails at 70.4%.

We cannot simply pin this gap on the Department of Education. It proves raw growth cannot fix learning deficits. The answers lie inside the school system.

The study directly acknowledges a fair objection to all of this. A highly urbanized city is not a closed loop. Workers from Pavia, Oton, Leganes, and Santa Barbara clock in downtown and they carry their wages home across municipal boundaries that the data does not track. Part of the city’s income gap comes from geography, not injustice.

This highlights the need to plan for the functional Metro Iloilo economy instead of sticking strictly to city limits. The study recommends Regional Development Councils do exactly this. But we cannot look away. The province absorbing those wages also saw family incomes lag behind output. Its household margins shrank too.

The study makes a modest request. It wants no new index and no new bureaucracy. It simply proposes a six-stage diagnostic. The Regional Development Council, DEPDev, and local governments should run this test on every economic release before drafting a celebratory headline.

Here are the questions this diagnostic poses right now:

• Which activities produced that 6.1% growth?
• How many workers do they employ, and where do those workers live?
• Which household costs are eating the income gains?
• Why does a city with these resources produce functional literacy 6.4 points below what those resources should buy?

Until we answer those questions, the growth rate is an empty statistic. It tracks wealth the household never felt.

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