The unemployment rate climbed to 4.3% in January 2025, compared to 3.1% in December 2024, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).
Based on its Labor Force Survey, 2.16 million individuals were unemployed in January 2025, the same amount recorded for January 2024.
In contrast, 1.63 million individuals were unemployed in December 2024.
Meanwhile, the employment rate for January 2025 was 95.7%, slightly higher than the rate recorded in January 2024, which was 95.5%. However, in December last year, the employment rate was 96.9%.
Meanwhile, the labor force participation rate (LFPR) in January 2025 was estimated at 63.9% or 50.65 million Filipinos. The PSA noted that this was higher than the LFPR in January 2024, which was 61.1%.
The PSA also noted that services continued to the the top sectors in terms of the number of employed persons with a share of 61.6% of the total employed individuals in January 2025.
Meanwhile, wage and salary workers continued to be the largest share of employed persons in January 2025 at 63.0%. Among the said group, those employed in private establishments remained to have the highest share at 78.5% of the wage and salary workers, while 49.5% was the total employed persons.
This was followed by self-employed persons without paid employees at 28.2% and unpaid family workers at 6.6%.
Subsequently, employers in their family-operated farms or businesses posted the lowest share of 2.2%.
