DAVAO CITY (MindaNews / 12 March) – Employment rate in the Davao Region improved to 94 percent in January, compared to 93.6 percent during the same period last year, data from Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) revealed.
PSA data released Thursday said the region’s employment rate was also higher compared to the national rate of 93.4 percent.
“We are slightly over from January last year’s employment rate,” said Sherwin B. Manual, information officer of Department of Labor and Employment XI.
Noting on the figures, Manual said this means that the region was able to sustain the number of actively employed persons. As of January, there were about 1.9 million actively employed in the region.
Underemployment rate, he said, reached to 19.3 percent against last year’s 19.7 percent.
“All of our employment indicators are showing us good figures that we have sustained our employment at Davao Region,” Manual said.
But compared to October last year, he said there was a slight decline on the employment rate as some of the workers’ contracts already ended. As of October last year, the region’s employment rate stood at 94.5 percent based on the report of PSA.
Some construction activities, he added, were also completed last year.
Throughout Mindanao, data from PSA showed that as of January, Davao Region continued to be among those with the lowest employment rate in the island, along with Caraga which had 93.5 percent. The region with the highest employment rate was Region XII with 97.7 percent, followed by Region IX at 97.5 percent.
Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao got 97.3 percent while Region X had 94.8 percent.
Last year, Maria Lourdes D. Lim, regional director of National Economic and Development Authority XI, said Davao Region’s overall employment rate was 94.2 percent, which increased from 93.1 percent in 2013. She said the bulk of the labor force were employed by information and communications technology and agriculture sectors.
“The solid performance in the employment rate is indicative of the effective job generation and facilitation efforts of the government, which are continually gaining more ground,” Lim said.
