1.63 million Filipinos jobless as of December 2024
Credit to Author: Jean Mangaluz| Date: Thu, 6 Feb 2025 11:40:00 +0800
MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) reported on Thursday, January 6 that 1.63 million Filipinos were unemployed as of December 2024, representing 3.1% of the labor force.
This marked a slight improvement from November 2024's unemployment figure of 1.66 million but was marginally higher than the 1.60 million recorded in December 2023.
The employment rate for December 2024 stood at 96.9%, translating to 50.19 million employed individuals. However, this was lower than the 50.52 million employed in December 2023, though it showed an increase from November 2024’s employment total of 49.54 million.
“This was lower than the number of employed persons of 50.52 million in December 2023, but higher than the number of employed persons in November 2024 at 49.54 million,” the PSA said.
The underemployment rate—a measure of workers seeking additional hours or jobs—rose slightly from 10.8% in November to 10.9% in December 2024.
The services sector remained the largest employer, accounting for a significant 60.5% of the labor force.
Wage and salary workers made up the majority of employed individuals at 63.1%, while self-employed workers contributed 28.5%, and unpaid family workers constituted 6.8%.
In terms of industry distribution, the agriculture industry employed 21.3% while the industry sector had 18.3%.
Five sectors saw notable employment increases in December 2024:
Conversely, several industries saw the loss of workers as well, with the agriculture and forestry sector losing more than 1.5 million workers.
Average work hours. Filipinos worked an average of 40.9 hours per week in December 2024—higher than the average of 40.6 hours in December 2023 but slightly lower than November’s average of 41.1 hours, the PSA said.