Adult joblessness drops 3.3 points in third-quarter survey of SWS

THE SOCIAL Weather Stations (SWS) in its third quarter survey found adult joblessness at 18.9%, which the polling group said “is the lowest recorded joblessness rate since the 18.4% in September 2016.”

This latest figure in the The Third Quarter 2017 Social Weather Survey covers an estimated 8.7 million adults and is 3.3 points below the 22.2% last June, covering an estimated 10.5 million adults.

September’s adult joblessness rate consisted of “those who voluntarily left their old jobs at 10.4% (est. 4.8 million adults), those who involuntarily lost their jobs at 6.6% (est. 3.1 million adults), and first-time job seekers at 1.9% (est. 860,000 adults),” SWS said — noting further that the proportion of those who resigned or left their old jobs voluntarily fell by 1.8 points (12.1% in June to 10.4% in September), those who were retrenched rose by 0.5 points (6.1% in June to 6.6% in September), and the proportion of first-time job seekers fell by 2.1 points (3.9% in June to 1.9% in September).

Apart from the decline in adult joblessness, optimism that there will be more jobs decreased by one point to 45% in September, while pessimism that there will be fewer jobs rose by three points from 15% in June to 18% in September.

“The proportion of those who say there will be no change in job availability fell by three points from 30% in June 2017 to 27% in September 2017,” SWS said. “This downgrades the Net Optimism on Job Availability score (% more jobs minus % fewer jobs) by three points from the very high +31 in June 2017 to a high +28 in September 2017.”

The survey noted that adult joblessness among women fell by 4.9 points from 31.5% in June to 26.5% in September. “This is the lowest figure among women since the 26.1% in September 2017,” the polling group said.

“Among men, adult joblessness decreased by 1.8 points from the 15.2% in June to the 13.5% in September. It has been below 20% since March 2014.”

Adult joblessness fell by 10.6 points among 18 to 24 year olds (from 60.8% in June to 50.2% in September) and by 10.4 points among 25 to 34 year olds (from 31.7% to 21.3%)

Among the 35-44 age bracket, joblessness decreased by 4.1 points (from 17.0% in June to 12.8% in September), but increased by 3.8 points among the 45 and above (from 9.9% to 13.8%).

SWS data on joblessness differs in certain areas from the recently released Labor Force Survey. The Social Weather Survey was conducted September 23- 27, using face-to-face interviews of 1,500 adults ( 18 years old and above) nationwide, 600 in Balance Luzon and 300 each in Metro Manila, the Visayas and Mindanao (with sampling error margins of ± 3% for national percentages, ±4% for Balance Luzon, and ±6% each for the other mentioned areas).