The country registered an employment rate of 93.4 percent, marking an increase of 2.8 percent since January last year, based on the 2015 January Labor Force Survey conducted by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).
Presidential Spokesperson Edwin Lacierda said in a statement that the year-on-year addition of 1.04 million workers in the employment force put the total number of employed at 37.5 million.
He said the increase is almost four times the 281,000 jobs created during the January 2013-2014 period, which posted an annual growth of 0.8 percent.
He said that according to the January 2015 survey, employment grew across all classes of workers, except those in family-operated businesses.
“The survey also indicates that our year-on-year underemployment rate went down to 17.5 percent, from 19.5 percent in January 2014,” Lacierda noted.
He said these figures do not include data from Region 8 because survey results needed to be comparable to that of the previous period ending in January 2014. According to the PSA, no survey was conducted in the area last year due to the devastation caused by Typhoon Yolanda.
