IBON Foundation denounced in a November 7 statement economic officials of the Marcos administration who described the national labor situation as “stable.” The group also warned that the upcoming gross domestic product data of the state would again wrongfully depict the economy as “growing.”

“The employment figures are no longer credible indicators of a decent standard of living,” IBON lead researcher Sonny Africa said. Millions of Filipinos suffer from what he called jobless or worse, job-destroyin “growth”

The group’s latest analysis of government-released statistics focused on the 270,000 net job loss in September 2025 alone. The number of employed persons fell from 49.9 million in September last year to 49.6 million this September 2025. The number of unemployed increased by 63,000 to 2 million, while the number of underemployed dropped by 421,000 to 5.5 million.

However, 40.2 percent or 20 million of those considered employed actually belong to the “informal sector,” characterized by extremely low and irregular wages. This includes those labeled as self-employed, small farm and business owners, domestic helpers, and unpaid family workers. Adding workers in informal private establishments, seven out of ten Filipino workers hold jobs outside the standards and protections of labor laws.

IBON also said the state artificially narrows the underemployment rate by excluding “discouraged workers,” or those who have been out of work for so long that they fall out of the labor force count.

While the agriculture sector recorded an additional 439,000 jobs, this is not enough to make up for the as many as 1.5 million jobs lost as recently as July. Meanwhile, 493,000 jobs were lost in the category of “other services,” including the largest loss of 573,000 in domestic or household services.

“The labor market will remain unstable as long as the government refuses to develop agriculture and Filipino industries to create decent and stable work,” IBON said.