Concerns have emerged over the failure of the government to address the problem of employment after the Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey showed one in four Filipinos are without jobs.
Sonny Africa, executive director of Ibon Foundation, said the government’s work remained unimpressive on the employment front.
The results, based on the results of its December 12-16, 2021, SWS survey, showed that 24.7 percent or 11 million of the Philippines’ 44.5 million labor force were jobless, which was among the highest unemployment rates in the world.
World Bank data has also shown that the average unemployment rate was only 2.9 percent even at the height of the pandemic in 2020.
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The top 10 countries with the highest unemployment rates were South Africa (29.2 percent), Kosovo (26.2 percent), Djibouti (26.1 percent), West Bank and Gaza Strip (25.9 percent), Equatorial Guinea (25 percent), Botswana (24.9 percent), Grenada (22.9 percent) and Eswatini (22.7 percent).
The Philippine unemployment rate was worse than three of the countries on the World Bank list.
Africa said that the SWS survey and the official Labor Force Survey (LFS) jobless data showed that the economy “still hasn’t recovered even just to its pre-COVID-19 levels.”
According to the data from Ibon Foundation the annual average job creation from 2017 to 2019 was already the lowest of any administration in the post-Marcos era.
