MANILA: Filipinos continue to suffer from poverty despite being employed, a new study by the World Bank, Labor Market Review: Employment and Poverty in the Philippines, has revealed.
“This new report shows that contrary to some perceptions, economic growth in the last 10 years has created enough jobs to absorb the growing labor force. Still, many workers remain underemployed,” Rappler quoted World Bank country director Mara Warwick as saying.
Those considered underemployed are people with jobs who express the desire to have additional hours of work in their present job, to have an additional job, or to have a new job with longer working hours, the report said.
The Philippine economy has been steadily growing at around 5 percent to 6 percent, but Warwick reportedly said the issue is that “many of the newly created jobs are precarious and low-paying,” mostly found under the informal sector.
According to World Bank lead economist Jan Ruthowski, reducing in-work poverty is thus the main challenge that the country’s labor sector is facing.
He reportedly attributed the cause of in-work poverty among Filipinos to the low learning capacity of the poor, saying that 30 percent of workers who finished secondary education hold unskilled jobs and work as laborers.
Rutkowski added that there is a scarcity of productive, well-paying jobs, especially in the rural areas.
The World Bank’s findings echo the data recently released by the Philippine Statistics Authority.
Meanwhile, the unemployment rate in April 2016 declined to 6.1 percent from 6.4 percent a year ago, but the underemployment rate climbed to 18.4 percent from 17.8 percent, reported Rappler.
Rutkowski further acknowledged that while the growing Philippine economy produced jobs for Filipinos, it did not necessarily improve the quality of jobs.
He reportedly discussed labor market segmentation, wherein the World Bank classified work into two: good jobs, which are “formal, permanent, well-paid, and offering social protection; “and bad jobs, which are “temporary, casual, informal, precarious and low-paid, often with very little or no social protection.”
