The P35 wage hike could affect around 40,000 to 140,000 workers in Metro Manila, National Economic and Development Secretary Arsenio Balisacan said Tuesday.

In a press briefing, Balisacan said the approved wage hike in the National Capital Region (NCR) would only have a “negligible” impact on the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) and could slightly increase the unemployment rate.

“For the wage orders that have been issued as of March 2024, we still don’t have all the numbers, but our estimates so far suggest that the national output, GDP, would be impacted negatively, but it’s a very small impact. It’s just about one-tenth of one percent. It’s very negligible,” Balisacan told reporters.

“It could increase unemployment rate but again, it’s a very negligible number; and it could impact something like 40,000 to 140,000, depending on the region but still again, not as big as one would expect if those rate adjustments are much higher,” he added.

Balisacan said the wage increase was not constraining to the economy.

“They are not really that constraining when it comes to the economy. For so long as those wage adjustments are not too high to discourage investments, those adjustments are welcome,” Balisacan said.

“And the data that we have seen is that as of March, April this year ? those adjustments are simply adjusting to the level of inflation ‘no and a little bit more ‘no so that the purchasing power of workers’ wages and salaries will not fall. And that should not be a worry to the business community and to even for us as economic managers because the impact of the uninflation or ungrowth is not that much. We can assume that,” he said.

The Regional Tripartite Wages and Productivity Board (RTWPB) last week approved a P35 minimum wage hike for employees in the NCR.

This raises the new minimum wage of non-agriculture workers to P645 from P610.

Meanwhile, service or retail firms with 15 employees or less and manufacturing establishments with 10 workers or less will increase their minimum salary to P608 from P573. Jaspearl Tan/DMS