Finance Secretary Ralph Recto welcomed the unprecedented progress in the Philippines’ labor market in 2024, with the full-year average unemployment rate at its lowest level of 3.8 percent since the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) started compiling comparable data in 2005.

The annual average unemployment rate is well below the full-year target range of 4.4 percent to 4.7 percent set under the Philippine Development Plan 2023-2028. This also surpassed the 4 percent to 5 percent target set for 2028.

In 2024, a total of 48.8 million Filipinos were employed?the highest full-year level recorded. The quality of jobs for Filipinos has also improved, as the full-year underemployment rate dropped to 11.9 percent?its lowest level ever.

“The world is already taking notice of the strength of the Filipino workforce. During my engagements with global investors at the World Economic Forum in Davos, they consistently expressed high praise for Filipino talent. This is an opportunity the government is determined to fully harness and maximize, especially as the world transitions to using Artificial Intelligence (AI),” he added.

On average, the services sector continued to dominate the labor market, making up 61.1 percent of the total employed persons in 2024. This was followed by agriculture (20.7 percent share) and industry (18.3 percent share).

The construction sector was the biggest employment driver for the year, adding an average of 298,000 more workers to the labor force compared to 2023.

Other sectors that posted additional jobs last year included: accommodation and food service activities (269,000), transportation and storage (250,000), and administrative and support service activities (241,000).

Wage and salary workers also continued to make up the largest share of employed persons in the country at an average of 63.8 percent in 2024. This is higher than the 62.6 percent share in 2023.

In particular, 78.9 percent of wage and salary workers were employed by private establishments, while only 14.4 percent were employed by the government. DOF Information Management Service