More jobs to alleviate poverty pushed
A strengthened and enhanced partnership between the national government and local government units (LGU) is key to job generation and poverty alleviation for more Filipinos, a Malacañang official said.
Cabinet Secretary Karlo Nograles said creating more job opportunities for citizens is one of the main thrusts of the Duterte administration -- a vision that can be realized through national and local cooperation.
“When there are more job opportunities, more families are alleviated from poverty,” the Palace official said in his speech before local executives at the Region 9 Local Chief Executives Forum organized by the Department of Labor and Employment last Friday.
Citing data from the National Economic Development Authority, Nograles shared that an estimated 1.3 million jobs were created from April 2018 to April 2019. This resulted in an employment rate of 94.9 percent, the highest among all April rounds of the Labor Force Survey since 2009.
“The unemployment rate dropped in April this year to 5.1 percent from 5.5 percent in April 2018. The underemployment rate, on the other hand, also fell to its lowest in more than a decade at 13.5 percent. This means that today there are 42.2 million Filipinos who are employed,” the former legislator from Davao stated. “However, the government recognizes that with a growing population, we must sustain and improve our job generation efforts. This we will do by continuing the “Build, Build, Build” infrastructure program and pushing for legislation like the TRABAHO (Tax Reform for Attracting Better and Higher Quality Opportunities) bill — initiatives we believe will attract more investments; investments that will lead to the creation of employment opportunities for our countrymen,” he added.