Low-quality, temporary, and short-term jobs. Meager and exploitative wages. This is the full picture as revealed by the data from the Philippine Statistics Authority’s (PSA) Labor Force Survey (LFS) for the month of June 2024.
Unemployment decreased to 3.1% or 1.62 million individuals, while the underemployed increased to 6.08 million, or 12.1% of all employed individuals.
The Marcos Jr. administration will surely flaunt the decrease in the unemployment rate, but we will uncover the truth upon deeper analysis.
Firstly, the jobs created by the Marcos Jr. administration are low-quality and temporary. The top job-creating sectors are construction, wholesale and retail trade, and food service. There is also a notable decline observed in agricultural jobs.
Although the number of workers in manufacturing is said to have increased, the widespread and ongoing layoffs in the electronics and garments sectors have a long-term and deep-seating impact, in the overall sense.
Secondly, the fact that workers are receiving meager wages. The consistent increase in the underemployment rate highlights the decline in the real value of wages, while minimum wage hikes from the regional wage boards are meager and for-show.
The underemployment rate signifies the number of workers seeking additional hours of work, or additional jobs, or jobs with longer working hours.
The situation also highlights our economy’s reliance on foreign investment, where we are always on the losing end. Our nation is dependent on market forces impacting foreign economies, always putting into risk the jobs of Filipino workers.
What the government should do is to implement a national minimum wage at a living wage standard – P1200 at present. It should also outline and implement a genuine program for creating regular, long-term jobs aligned with the goals of national development.
Workers should fight for these through various means – building their unions, engaging in dialogue, and launching massive protests to advance their demands. The working class should ultimately struggle for fundamental societal changes – genuine land reform and national industrialization that will serve as a foundation for a society that truly cares for its people.