ILOILO City – Employment rate in Western Visayas, or the proportion of employed persons to the total labor force, was estimated at 96.6 percent in October 2023, recent data by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) showed.
This percentage accounted for 3,418,000 of the 3,538,000 population in the labor force.
It posed an increase from the 95.5 percent employment rate in July 2023 and from 94.9 percent in October 2022.
Further, more than 60 percent of the population aged 15 and over were in the labor force.
In October 2023, the labor force participation rate (LFPR) in Western Visayas was 62.7 percent, which accounted for 3,538,000 of the 5,642,000 persons who were 15 years old and over.
This was higher than the reported LFPR in July 2023 at 61.1 percent but lower than in October 2022 at 64.3 percent.
PSA data also showed that, in the same period, the underemployment rate registered at 14.8 percent.
Underemployed persons are employed persons 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 underemployment rate in October 2023 accounted for 506,000 of the 3,418,000 total employed persons. It was lower than the recorded underemployment rate in July 2023, at 19.5 percent, and compared to October 2022, at 15.3 percent.
Lastly, the unemployment rate in Western Visayas in October 2023 dropped to 3.4 percent, compared to 5.1 percent in October 2022 and 4.5 percent in July 2023. This showed that unemployed persons decreased to 120,000 persons in October 2023 when compared to 182,000 persons in October 2022./PN
