Even with the overall increase of employed Filipinos in the March Labor Force report of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), the decline in labor in agriculture, forestry and fishery/aquaculture because of the dry spell from El Nino was a substantial 1.33 million jobs in March 2024.
This, even as the March LFS saw an increase in the number of employed Filipinos by 572,000 to 49.15 million from the 48.58 million during the same month last year.
The PSA said among the most affected in terms of employment was the agriculture sector including fisheries.
National Statistician Claire Dennis Mapa said the lost jobs related to planting, harvesting, growing paddy rice and vegetables.
“The PSA said the value of production of agriculture and fisheries has been released, and one sees from there that, in crops and fisheries, including also livestock, particularly hog farming, there has been a reduction in value of production. So the value of production of agriculture and fisheries is consistent with labor statistics. So yes, they were affected by the El Niño,” Mapa explained.
Jobs in agriculture and forestry declined by 881,000 to 9.04 million in March 2024 from 9.92 million in March 2023.
On a month-on-month basis, agriculture and forestry also posted the largest decline in employment — estimated to be around 318,000 lost jobs in the sector from the 9.36 million recorded in February 2024, reported Business Mirror..
In terms of fishing and aquaculture, the number of employed workers reached 1.03 million in March 2024, a decline of 449,000 from 1.48 million in March 2023.
Long-term decline
But Ateneo de Manila economist Leonardo Lanzona disagreed with the PSA view.
“It seems far-fetched to attribute the increase in unemployment in March to El Niño given that the impact of the heat wave was in April," he said.
He blamed the decline instead on the government's dependence on importation to reduce inflation, rather than “strengthening the domestic environment, agricultural activities have naturally declined,” he told Business Mirror.
He added that the government’s “institutional inflexibility,” would worsen the state of agricultural jobs in the next few months, particularly in April.
Lanzona said that as early as last year, the government has already been apprised of the El Nño and thus should have adjusted its policies to ensure that jobs in the sector are not lost.
If this “inflexibility” continues, the same trend in job losses could be expected or even worsen at the onset of the La Niña weather phenomenon next month.
“In fact, El Niño had been predicted since last year, and the failure to adapt institutionally to these worsening climate conditions was already reflected last March, but this institutional inflexibility will more likely be felt in April,” Lanzona stressed.
“[Given t]his inability to respond immediately to changing climate and social conditions, the agricultural unemployment picture will get even worse in June with the onset of La Niña,” he added.
Rebound soon?
Another economist, Maria Ella Oplas, from De La Salle University, was more optimistic saying that the next few months will see an increase in agriculture jobs due to the planting season.
Oplas said planting may have already started in some areas as farmers have begun setting aside cash to prepare planting.
Some farmers, she said, have redirected funds from housing construction to capital for planting.
She also expected the rainy season to increase farmer’s productivity, especially in areas where irrigation remains a problem.
The only caveat is that heavy rains could inundate and destroy crops.
The face of jobs in the farm sector, Oplas said, is also changing through mechanization. Instead of hiring farm hands, some farmers who have access to machines now prefer using these to increase farm productivity.
“It’s not the employment that we used to have, considering that instead of hiring people now, they just rent or buy machines to do the planting. Technology plays an important role in agriculture,” Oplas said.
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