“Marcos Jr. wants the public to believe that being an upper middle-income country and easing headline inflation means conditions are improving. But the reality on the ground is the exact opposite. Filipino families are being crushed by high prices, low incomes, and worsening joblessness. The situation is especially severe in the countryside, where peasants face both soaring production costs and rising household expenses,” the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) said.
Gabriel Marquez graduated from the University of the Philippines on Tuesday, joining 700,000 other college graduates from all over the country this year. The newly-minted 22 year old statistician has a scheduled employment interview with a local bank today.
But Gabriel’s parents would rather have their son join them in a European country and seek employment abroad, like the more than 10 millions overseas Filipino workers and expatriates.
The graduate’s parents’ wishes actually align with a recent announcement that employment in the Philippines took a dive this year.
Employment dive
Unemployment rate in the country stood at 4.7% at the start of the year, representing 2.41 million Filipinos without jobs. After six months, nearly 600,000 workers joined them.
The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) in its latest Labor Force Survey announced there are now 2.5 million jobless, representing 4.8% of the country’s 51.3 million labor force. There are also 6.04 million underemployed workers (those who want an extra job or a side hustle to augment their incomes), or 12.2% of the labor force.
These are the numbers that Gabriel has become part of. He joins the millions of employable individuals actively seeking jobs. Youth employment in the Philippines remains a critical pressure point, with the employment rate among the youth dropping to 87.6% from 95.2%, leaving many young jobseekers vulnerable.
Weather and war
It is the Philippine agricultural sector that bears the brunt of the slide in employment numbers, PSA said. National Statistician Claire Dennis Mapa said the significant year-on-year rise in the jobless rate numbers about 905,000.
Mapa blamed the onset of the Super El Niño phenomenon as many farmers have chosen to skip cropping seasons due to reduced rains this year, causing loss of jobs among agricultural workers.
“There are about 734,000 rice growing workers and 428,000 corn growers who lost their jobs due to the impact of the weather condition this 2026,” he said.
Malacañang Palace, for its part, acknowledged that the oil crisis brought about by the Middle East War contributed to the rise in the unemployment rate.
Palace Press Officer Undersecretary Claire Castro said fishing workers could not regularly sail out due to increases in fuel prices. Castro further noted that other agricultural workers have opted to find other means of livelihood due to the effects of high fuel costs.
‘Stop blaming external forces’
KMP said the Ferdinand Marcos Jr. government should stop blaming the country’ worsening economic conditions to external events such as the weather and the war in West Asia.
Rising unemployment are not simply the result of external events, but of government’s failure of policies, the KMP said. The group criticized the government for its failure to implement pro-people policies that should resist natural and geopolitical pressures.
Job loss is primarily government’s failure, KMP said. # (Raymund B. Villanueva)
