The Philippines’ unemployment rate climbed in May from April, while the underemployment rate declined, the Philippine Statistics Authority said on Wednesday.
The unemployment rate edged up slightly to 4.8% in May-26 from April’s four-month low of 4.7%, higher than the 3.9% recorded in the same month last year due to agricultural job losses induced by the El Niño phenomenon. This brought the number of unemployed individuals to 2.50m, up from 2.41m in the prior month, which nudged the overall employment rate down to 95.2% from 95.3%, even as total employment expanded to 49.63m (Apr-26: 48.89m).
On the sector basis, the services sector maintained its position as the primary employment driver at 61.8% of the workforce, followed by agriculture at 19.9% and industry at 18.3%. Concurrently, underemployment saw a significant contraction, falling to 12.2% (Apr-26: 15.2%) with average weekly working hours rising to 41.1 (Apr-26: 40.2). Structurally, wage and salary workers constituted 64.3% of the total labor force, with the vast majority (79.4%) engaged within private establishments.
From a monetary MBSB noted that the policy perspective, this marginal uptick in unemployment is unlikely to deter the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) from its current hawkish trajectory. Because the labor market soft patch is heavily localised within the climate-impacted agricultural sector, rather than signalling systemic demand-side economic deterioration, the central bank is expected to look through these figures and remain focused on anchoring inflation expectations.
