Job market,

The government also announced a P27.1-billion relief package to aid affected sectors. This will go to programs for upskilling and reskilling of temporarily-displaced workers, zero-interest loans for small farmers and fisherfolk, wage subsidies or financial support for affected workers and firms, unemployment benefits and loans for micro, small, and medium enterprises.

However, analysts said the government should do more to further protect workers.

UP’s Mr. Ofreneo highlighted the central role of the government in a “wholeof-society” approach of providing social protection during the ongoing crisis.

“The government should save everybody, especially the workers. There should be a registry of employees identifying who are in the formal and informal sectors, at least per local government unit,” he said.

The whole-of-society approach refers to joint efforts of government agencies and the private sector in providing a common solution to a problem.

“It is understandable that daily wage earners need to be given priority as they will be the most vulnerable among workers. DoLE is on the right track, but they may need more resources for the program they rolled for the affected work force,” ADMU’s Mr. Ang said.

Mr. Ang said that during the community quarantine, the public and private sectors’ “resources should be coordinated and put to best use.”

“The public and private sectors can work together by funding logistics and movement of people within cities. Delivery services of food and essentials, mobility of health workers and other frontliners service such as those in supermarkets, drug stores, wet markets, security personnel should be subsidized and organized uniformly across the country. This should help keep afloat the public transport sector especially the daily earners,” he said.

For UA&P’s Mr. Terosa, the government’s stimulus package for workers “may not be sufficient.”

“If GDP will fall by 0.6-1 percentage point (ppt), around 30,000 to 50,000 jobs will be directly lost. The stimulus package may create only 15,000 to 17,000 jobs,” he said.

Aside from direct losses, Mr. Terosa also pointed to “disastrous” opportunity costs caused by the pandemic: “If GDP will fall by 0.6-1 ppt, 300,000 to 500,000 jobs would not be created and P500-800 billion pesos worth of goods would not be produced. Imagine that,” he said.

OUTLOOK

The latest LFS result puts the country’s unemployment rate at 5.3% and the underemployment rate at 14.8%, both of which were the lowest among the January rounds of the LFS since 2005.

This would most likely not be the case this year, economists said.

“Definitely unemployment figures will rise. Even if temporary, we might see a double-digit increase,” UP’s Mr. Ofreneo said.

UA&P’s Mr. Terosa said the low unemployment and underemployment rates will be not be maintained in the first half.

“First-quarter unemployment and underemployment rates will be slightly above last year’s rates, but [the second-quarter] unemployment rate can hover close to double-digits while underemployment rate can soar close to 18-20%,” he said.

“I believe that we need to wage war against the virus first and win the economic battle later… As long as the spread of the disease is palpably rampant, there is nothing much that everyone can do,” said Mr. Terosa said.