Militant youth group Anakbayan in Iloilo maintained that the government is not doing enough to address the problem of unemployment in the country, amid the increase the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

“The 7.1 percent growth in GDP in the third quarter of 2012 happened amid a poor jobs situation in the same period. This highlights that the problem of jobless growth is not being resolved,” said Bryan Bosque, spokesperson of Anakbayan-Iloilo.  

Bosque cited that the in first three quarters of 2012, “growth came mainly from the services sector which has relatively weak job creation potential, productivity and earnings compared to manufacturing and a modern agriculture sector.”

He said “the GDP increase was fueled mainly by ‘external’ sources such as foreign investments, OFW remittances, and the BPO (business process outsourcing) sector, sectors which do not contribute to growth in essential areas such as manufacturing and agriculture.”

He said official job estimates in the third quarter of 2012 (July round) showed just a 477,000-increase in total employed to 37.6 million from the same period in 2011, or less than half the target of one million new jobs per year. 

However, the official unemployment rate remained virtually unchanged at 7.0%, from 7.1% last year, with 2.8 million unemployed. Moreover, the number of underemployed drastically increased by 1.5 million to reach 8.5 million in July 2012.

The claim that ordinary Filipinos are benefiting from the supposed 7.1% GDP increase is false and misleading, added Bosque.*