by Ben Moses Ebreo
Bayombong, Nueva Vizcaya-- Despite the global economic slowdown, the employment rate in Cagayan Valley went up in 2008 compared in 2007, a Labor Market Monitoring Report (LMMR) released by the National Statistics Office (NSO) and the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) here revealed.
The LMMR disclosed that there was a slight increase (1.5% or 21,000) on the number of employed persons from 1,342,000 in July 2007 to 1,363,000 in July 2008 or a percentage increase from 97.7% to 97.8%.
On employed persons and proportion by educational attainment, high school graduate registered the highest number with 325,000, followed by elementary with 287,000 and elementary undergraduates with 237,000 reported employed.
On employed persons by class of worker, there were 667,000 wage and salary workers in July, 2008, an increase of 17,000 or 2.55% from the 650,000 figure in July 2007. There were 86,823 males and 49,340 females who were employed during the period.
By type of industry, majority of employed persons were in the agricultural sector with a total of 811,000, followed by service sector with 454,000 and the industry sector with 98,000 employed.
The number of those who worked in the agricultural sector was higher by 4.6 percentage points from the 773,000 record in the previous years. It was noted that proportion of employment in the service and industry sector went down in July 2008 with the industry figure decreasing from 103,000 to 98,000.
Laborer and unskilled workers registered the highest employment among the major occupation groups at 44.5 percent in July 2008. This is followed by agricultural workers such as farmers, forestry workers and fishermen which accounted for 23.3 percent of the total employed. Special occupations registered the lowest with only 4,000 employed.
On job vacancies solicited in July 2008, the DOLE, thru the Public Employment Service Offices(PESOs) in the region generated 4,791 job vacancies.
There were 9,031 applicants who registered in this period. Out of this number 78% or 7,406 were placed.
UNEMPLOYMENT
The number of unemployed went down by 11,000 from its total unemployed of 52,000 in July 2007 to 41,000 in July 2008.
The unemployment rate in July 2008 was estimated at 2.9 percent, a slight decrease of 0.9 percentage point compared to its level of 3.8 percent last year. The unemployed also showed 25,000 males and 16,000 females.
UNDEREMPLOYMENT
Underemployment increased from 222,000 to 247,000. This is 25 thousand more than the July 2007 level. Of the 247,000 figure of underemployed, 176,000 were visibly underemployed. Region 2 had an increasing underemployment rate from 3.5 to 4.2 in July 2007 to July 2008.
However, even the number of unemployed persons went down by 11,000, underemployment was very high with a reported figure of 247,000.
LABOR FORCE
The July 2008 labor force was estimated at 1,404,000 from the reported 1,394,000 in the same period in 2007. This means an increase of 10,000 persons in the labor force.
The population in the labor force went down slightly in October 2007 but gradually moved up in the succeeding period. A total of 1.4 million persons or 68.8 percent are in the labor force with 89,294 males and 51,105 females.
LABOR PARTICIPATION RATE
The July 2008 figure showed that labor force participation rate was lowest in April 2008 while July 2007 posted the highest rate.
Labor force participation rate went down from 67.8% in July 2007 to 66.8% in the same period in 2008. This went down by 1%. This maybe attributed to the gradual growth of the population in the labor force. (DOLE/NSO/PIA NVizcaya)
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