Thousands of unemployed workers swarmed the “job fairs” opened by some local governments as their “offerings” during the recent Labor Day. In the job fair in Eastern Visayas, nearly 12,000 jobs were reportedly offered in various centers in the region. In Manila and Quezon City, 9,000 jobs each were reportedly offered to those who flocked here. In Bulacan, there are said to be more than 3,000. Typical of these “job fairs”, businesses in these markets actually employ only a fraction of workers.

More importantly, the number of jobs offered at job fairs is very small compared to the millions of Filipinos looking for work this year. Ibon Foundation says 7.5 million or 13% of Filipino workers are unemployed. This is contrary to only 1.8 million unemployed claimed by the reactionary state.

In the data released by the Philippine Statistics Authority, the unemployment rate is only at 3.5%. This is because the agency did not include the 1.9 million Filipinos who were removed from the labor force, and the 3.8 million unpaid family workers or helpers in stores and other ventures of families or relatives. Also not included are the millions of women “housewives” who have long been excluded from the labor force.

In understated state statistics, the unemployment rate is highest among young workers. The unemployment rate among young workers aged 15-24 is at 8.6%, or more than double the national rate. This does not include the more than half a million (573,000) youth removed from the labor force in February and unpaid family workers. Some studies say that 40% of unpaid family workers are teenagers or between the ages of 15-19 years old.

Ibon says the Marcos regime’s job generation is very low, far below its own targets and even the annual average net job creation in the past decade.

The regime’s Labor and Employment Plan (LEP) 2023-2028 targeted to create over 3 million jobs within six years, or 500,000 annually. But from February 2023 to February 2024, it created only 150,000 new jobs, based on the state’s own statistics. This is less than 1/3 of the implied annual target, Ibon criticized. It is also just 15% the annual average of net job creation of 1.1 million from 2014-2023.