The Philippine Statistics Authority’s (PSA) Labor Force Survey shows that 2.16 million jobless Filipinos in January 2025

In a press conference, Deputy National Statistician and PSA Assistant Secretary Divina Gracia del Prado reported that jobless persons, ages 15 and above, rose to 2.16 million in the first month of 2025.

Del Prado attributes the higher unemployment rate — as the holiday-related demand for labor began to wane.

Survey shows that this was higher compared to the 1.63 million unemployed individuals last December 2024.

As a percentage of 50.65 million Filipinos in the labor force, who are actively looking for jobs and livelihoods during the period, the number of jobless persons translated to an unemployment rate of 4.3%, up from 3.1% month-on-month.

To illustrate, an unemployment rate of 4.3% means that 43 out of 1,000 individuals do not have jobs or livelihoods  in January 2025.

Consequently, the number of employed persons during the period declined to 48.49 million from 50.19 million in the last month of 2024.

This translates to an employment rate of 95.7%, down from 96.9%.

Del Prado attributed the increase in joblessness and decrease in employment to the waning of labor demand following the seasonal surge in labor requirements during the holidays.

“The trend was, always every December, number of employed shoots up and then come January it goes down… because the [seasonal] demand for workers was lessened,” the PSA official said in a mix of English and Filipino.

The services sector continued to be the dominant sector in terms of the number of employed persons, with a share of 61.6% of the total employed persons in January 2025.

The agriculture and industry sectors followed, accounting for 21.1% and 17.2%, respectively.

The four sub-sectors which posted the highest annual decreases in the number of employed individuals are as follows:

Manufacturing (-209,000)

Professional, scientific and technical activities (-58,000)

Arts, entertainment and recreation (-29,000)

Construction (-11,000)

Information and communication (-9,000)

Meanwhile, the top five sub-sectors in terms of annual increase in employed persons wre the following:

Agriculture and forestry (883,000)

Wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles (850,000)

Accommodation and food service activities (533,000)

Transportation and storage (141,000)

Administrative and support service activities (136,000)

The PSA also reported that wage and salary workers continued to account for the largest share of employed persons with 63% of the total number of employed persons in January 2025.

This was followed by self-employed persons without any paid employees at 28.2% and unpaid family workers at 6.6%. Employers in their own family-operated farm or business had the lowest share of 2.2%.

Among wage and salary workers, those employed in private establishments remained to have the highest share at 78.5% of the wage and salary workers or 49.5% of the total number of employed persons.

This was followed by those employed in government or government-controlled corporations with a share of 14.1% of the wage and salary workers or 8.9% of the total number of employed persons during the period.

The number of underemployed persons, those who expressed the desire to have additional hours of work in their present job or to have an additional job, or to have a new job with longer hours of work, stood at 6.47 million of the 48.49 million employed individuals during the period.

This translated to an underemployment rate of 13.3%.