Pinays prefer home over jobs — survey

A majority of Filipinas are now choosing to stay home rather than be employed, the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) said yesterday.

The DOLE-Institute for Labor Studies (ILS) said the number of working people dropped by almost 800,000 in July as more women resigned from their jobs.

“The decline in the labor force participation rate was driven in large part by more females dropping out of the labor market. Economically inactive females cited household and family as reasons for not being able to participate in the labor force,” the ILS said.

The implementation of the K-12 program resulted in more young people staying in school which, according to the ILS, partly contributed to the decline in the labor force.

The ILS said a year-on-year comparison of the Labor Force Survey (LFS) results showed a decline in the number of working people for three consecutive quarters since January.

While the labor participation rate continues to drop, the number of economically inactive females has been increasing during the period covered by the survey.

The ILS stressed the need to implement measures that would increase the female labor participation rate, which barely improved at around 50 percent in the last two decades, compared to the 73.7 percent male labor participation as of July this year.

The government must undertake gender-sensitive interventions that would allow female workers to integrate family and work responsibilities like increasing paid parental leave and flexible working arrangements, the ILS said.

“It is also crucial to institute a policy on equal employment opportunity and address employment discrimination against women,” it said.