Jobless rate falls to 3.9% in August as farms rehire
Manila, Philippines – The ranks of the jobless shrank in August, thanks to farms and builders rehiring workers after a lull the previous month brought about by typhoons, the national statistics agency said on Wednesday.
The country clocked in an unemployment rate of 3.9 percent that month, improving from July’s 5.3 percent, data released by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) showed.
That rate – measured as a ratio of those without jobs as a proportion of the labor force aged 15 years old and up – is equivalent to 2.03 million jobless people, fewer than July’s 2.59 million.
The data showed nearly four million jobs were added that month to boost the population of workers to 50.10 million from just 46.05 million in July.
Construction and fishing topped the sectors that added jobs, with 540,000 and 448,000 respectively.
Agriculture and forestry filled 300,000 posts. They could just be rehires or workers returning to the weather-vulnerable sectors, the PSA said.
“Yung bawas noong July – agriculture, retail trade and construction – bumalik sila ngayon. In a way naging temporary ang pagkawala ng trabaho noong Hulyo at nagbalik na,” National Statistician Claire Dennis Mapa said, referring to the typhoons that earlier forced farm job cuts.
[TRANSLATION: The job cuts in July – agriculture, retail trade and construction – were now restored. In a way, the layoffs were temporary last July and workers were rehired.]
Two-thirds of those with work are wage and salary workers (64.4%) in August 2025, while the rest were accounted for by the self-employed, unpaid family workers and farm or business owners.
Other metrics of the quality of the labor market improved.
Underemployment eased to 10.7 percent from 14.8 percent the month before, or 5.38 million out of the 50.10 million employed individuals wanting additional work hours or a second job.
