The number of jobless Filipinos in August 2022 has increased to 5.3 percent or 2.68 million, according to the latest report from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) released on Thursday, Oct. 6.

The August 2022 unemployment increased from 2.60 million recorded in July 2022, registering a month-on-month increase of 78.64 thousand unemployed persons.

But the PSA said the August 2022 unemployment rate was lower compared to the 8.1 percent recorded in August 2021.

Meanwhile, underemployment in August rose to 14.7 percent equivalent to 7.03 million Filipinos. This is higher compared to 13.8 percent recorded in the same period last year.

PSA defined underemployment as “employed persons 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 long hours of work.”

The top sub-sectors with the largest decrease in employment recorded were as follows: agriculture and forestry (-140 thousand); fishing and aquaculture (-124 thousand); construction (-81 thousand); manufacturing (-48 thousand); and information and communication (-12 thousand).

However, despite the increase in both unemployed and underemployed, the PSA said the employed individuals rose to 94.7 percent this August 2022.

This is higher than the 91.9 percent recorded employment rate in the same period last year but slightly lower than 94.8 in July 2022.

A large employment increase was seen in the following subsectors: wholesale and retail trade, repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles (1.54 million); accommodation and food service activities (479 thousand); administrative and support service activities (416 thousand); transportation and storage (349 thousand); and education (288 thousand).