Imagine that. Filipinos who are of working age, qualified and willing to work, remain jobless as of the end of December. They number around 2.26 million.
And this is just the official count of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), the government agency in charge of collating the data and churning out the numbers, such as the inflation rate.
Being a part of the Bongbong Marcos administration which has been weighed and found wanting by the people in most surveys, the PSA shares in the mistrust. People just do not believe their numbers, such as the one on inflation.
The fact is more and more Filipinos in the labor force are finding it hard to land a job.
The number of unemployed Filipinos increased to 2.26 million in December, higher than the 1.63 million logged in December 2024 and the previous month’s count of 2.25 million.
For 2025, the jobless rate averaged 4.2%, equivalent to 2.14 million jobless Filipinos. This was higher than the 3.8% jobless rate in 2024, which translated to 1.94 million jobless Filipinos.
The 2025 unemployment rate was the fastest in two years or since the 4.4% posted last 2023.
The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) attributes this to a sharp decrease in construction jobs in the last quarter of the year, mainly due to the government tightening of the purse following the flood control scandal that hit the national government agencies, particularly the Department of Public Works and Highways.
The number of jobless rose to 4.4% in December amid a sharp contraction in construction jobs, bringing the full-year average to a two-year high of 4.2%, data from the PSA showed.
Preliminary data from the Labor Force Survey (LFS) showed the jobless rate in December was higher than the 3.1% posted in December 2024. However, this was unchanged at 4.4% from November.
National Statistician Claire Dennis S. Mapa attributed the drop in unemployment in December to declines in public construction. Now we are seeing the horrific effect of the plunder that was successfully done by Zaldy Co, the congressmen and senators, the Executive department, the DPWH, the Romualdez-led House of Representatives and the Senate. Loss of jobs, loss of infrastructure services, loss of trust in government.
The construction sector recorded the largest job losses in December, shedding 550,000 workers year on year, while administrative and support services posted the biggest gain with 385,000 additional workers, PSA data showed.
“We know from our fourth-quarter GDP (gross domestic product) report that in the fourth quarter, [the growth rate] in construction really declined. It was negative there in construction, particularly public construction,” Mapa said.
The country’s GDP growth eased to 3% annually in the fourth quarter, the slowest growth recorded since the 3.8% contraction in the first quarter of 2021 at the height of the coronavirus pandemic.
This dragged the full-year growth to 4.4% in 2025, the lowest growth in five years or since the pandemic-induced contraction of 9.5% in 2020. It fell short of the government’s 5.5% to 6.5% target amid the multibillion-peso flood control scandal.
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