BAGUIO CITY – The Cordillera office of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA-CAR) reported that the region’s labor force participation rate of persons whose age is 15 years and over was estimated at 60.1 percent or about 743,000.
The PSA-CAR stated that the Cordillera was among the region with a labor force participation rate lower than the national rate of 60.7 percent considering that the region’s labor force participation rate dropped by 6.9 percent from 67 percent in January 2016 to 60.1 percent in January this year.
Based on the report, Negros Island Region had the highest labor force participation rate of 66.1 percent, translated to about 2,097,000 persons.
On the other hand, the PSA-CAR revealed that the number of employed persons in the region decreased by 1.8 percentage point from 95.7 percent in January 2016 to 93.9 percent in January this year.
Of the 743,000 employed persons in the region, the PSA-CAR stated 61 percent were males while 39 percent were females.
The PSA-CAR report added there was an increase in the number of employed males in the region by 1 percent while the number of employed females decreased by 1 percent from January 2016 to January this year.
Of those who are employed, the PSA-CAR explained the educational attainment is composed of 35 percent who have high school education, of which 23 percent graduated while 12 percent did not graduate.
Employed persons with college education followed with 32 percent of the total employed persons in the region, where 21 percent are bachelor degree-holders while 11 percent did not finish college.
According to the report employed persons with elementary level education came in third with a share of 24 percent, of which 10 percent graduated while 14 percent did not.
Employed persons with post-secondary level education amounted to only 5.4 percent of the total employed persons in the region wherein 5.3 percent graduated while 0.1 percent are considered to be undergraduates.
The PSA-CAE clarified that the percentage of employed persons in the Cordillera for January this year with no education or graduate level completed was at 2 percent and that the said level had the lowest incidents of employment in the region.
The PSA-CAR pointed out that the labor force survey provides a snapshot or the stock of economically active persons in the country at a particular point or reference and it aims to monitor the changes in the employment status of persons in the working age population and not in the labor force during a specified time period using the labor force framework.
The survey concept and measurement follows the international standards concerning statistics of the economically active population, employment, unemployment and under employment adopted by the 13th International Conference of Labor Statisticians.
By HENT