Letter to the editor on 11% unemployment rate rise

March 18, 2004

Dear Sir/Madam,

President Arroyo’s admission that her administration failed to ease unemployment should be seen in light of the constitutional mandate to promote full employment. Not only has government failed to fulfill this mandate, it is moving away from full employment. Despite strong economic growth in the last five years, joblessness has reached levels seen only at the height of the recession that marked the end of the Marcos regime.

If elected, the president promises to create one million jobs a year for the next six years. This is exactly the same approach that failed to lick the problem in the first three years of her administration. Apparently, she fails to appreciate the depth of the labor market crisis.

Consider the following: there are close to 4 million jobless Filipinos. Another 5.5 million workers are underemployed, that is, employed but wanting more hours of work. Still another 3 million people of working age are out of the labor force but are ready to join the search for work should job prospects improve. Meanwhile, the working age population grows by 1.7 million every year. A million jobs a year will not get us anywhere closer to full employment – only deeper into crisis.

In signaling business-as-usual, the president fails to realize that the roots of the current jobs crisis lie in the economic reforms implemented in the last 20 years. Aggressive import liberalization and tariff reduction have made the Philippine economy more import-dependent today than it had ever been. That is why it has become increasingly more difficult to translate economic growth to job growth.

To make matters worse, the government has abandoned its historical task to build a dynamic manufacturing base. Industrial policy became feared words in policymaking circles. The result is creeping de-industrialization, the gradual dismantling of the country’s manufacturing base.

Instead, government has been content to see agriculture and services as the main drivers of growth and employment generation. But without a healthy industrial base, growth and job creation in agriculture and services are simply not sustainable.

The depth of the unemployment crisis calls for change – not continuity – in economic policies. We challenge the political parties to offer concrete proposals that address the unemployment crisis and fulfill the constitutional mandate for full employment.



Daniel Edralin
Chair, Alliance of Progressive Labor
102 Sct de Guia cor Tomas Morato
Quezon City