MALACAÑANG said it welcomes a recent survey result released by the Social Weather Station saying that unemployment declined in the last three months.
“Our thrust is always to provide employment to our countrymen and certainly it is a welcome news to us that the unemployment, poverty, self-rated poverty have gone down,” Presidential Spokesperson Edwin Lacierda said during a press briefing in Malacanang on Friday.
“Our social alleviation programs… we are doing job matching, our education is geared towards job matching. TESDA also emphasizes that its vocational mandate is to ensure that we are able to find not only jobs for our countrymen but right jobs because there’s also a concern for underemployment. So we are trying to address unemployment and underemployment,” he added.
The SWS survey said unemployment dropped in the last three months, with the number of jobless Filipinos declining by nearly three million in late May from March 2012.
The survey, conducted by SWS from May 24 to 27 found the jobless rate at 26.6 percent, a slip from 34.4 percent in March. The survey firm said the 26.6 percent joblessness rate was equivalent to about 10.9 million adults, while the previous 34.4 percent was equivalent to 13.8 million Filipinos.
It added that unemployed workers include Filipinos who were retrenched (11 percent), had resigned (10 percent) or were first-time job seekers (5 percent).
Since November 2010, the SWS said “adult unemployment has been dominated by those who voluntarily left their old job and those who lost their jobs through economic circumstances beyond their control.”
Unemployment, which was below 15 percent from 1993 to March 2004, has mostly remained above 20 percent since May 2005, SWS noted. (PCOO)