10.9 million jobless

Here’s one reason for the lack of enthusiasm among overseas Filipino workers to leave Kuwait and return to their own country: a survey conducted by pollster Social Weather Stations Inc. showed that 10.9 million Filipinos were unemployed in the first quarter of the year.

The figure is a 15.7 percent increase from the 7.2 million jobless in December last year. SWS said of the 10.9 million, about 5.8 million voluntarily resigned from their jobs, 3.5 million involuntarily lost their jobs while the rest were first-time jobseekers who could not find employment. Optimism about job availability was also down by four points to 49 percent in the survey taken from March 23 to 27, according to SWS.

The joblessness rate was up all over the country except in Metro Manila, with the rate increasing by 6.3 percent to 21.6 percent in the Visayas – and this was before the six-month shutdown of Boracay. In Mindanao, the rate was 20.8 percent – an increase of 7.6 percent from December 2017.

If the survey is accurate, 10.9 million is about a tenth of the country’s entire population. That’s a lot of workers to worry about as the government tries to work out a compromise on job contracting. Yesterday, President Duterte signed an executive order that organized workers dismissed as nothing but a palliative for Labor Day, containing provisions on security of tenure that are already embodied in existing laws.

Happy workers are productive workers, while businessmen are needed to create jobs that can provide decent compensation. The government must provide the enabling environment for job generation while at the same time protecting workers from exploitation and other forms of abuse. This balancing act has always been challenging, and all parties concerned must be prepared for compromises.