3 M Filipinos now unemployed — DOLE

Almost three million Filipinos are now out of work, an increase of 200,000 from last year’s figure, the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) reported yesterday.

Labor Undersecretary for employment Danilo Cruz said the number comes from the July 2006 Labor Force Survey of the National Statistics Office (NSO).

"Labor force expanded by 2.6 percent or nearly a million, thus pushing the unemployed to 2.9 million compared to last year’s 2.7 million jobless Filipinos," he said.

Cruz said the underemployment rate also increased to 13.3 percent from 12.5 percent during the same period a year ago.

"The number of underemployed or those seeking extra job edged up slightly by 0.8 percent, which translates to 4.42 million or 337,000 higher than last year’s figure," he said.

However, Cruz said the country’s employment situation continued to improve as more people found quality jobs compared to the number of jobs generated in July 2005.

"Employment level grew by 2.3 percent in July and this translates to 735,000 new employment generated particularly from the service sector," he said.

Cruz said the service sector posted the biggest employment growth of 5.6 percent followed by the industry sector, while the figure for agriculture, and the fishery and forestry sectors fell by 1.2 percent.

The quality of employment improved substantially as shown by the 3.6 percent growth in full-time employment and 7.5 percent increase in wage and salary employment, he added.

On the other hand, Cruz said employment declined among part-time workers, own-account workers and unpaid family workers.

"About 18,000 workers are needed to fill in vacancies from Business Process Outsourcing and higher exports receipts in recent months may also pave the way for the recovery of the manufacturing sector," he said.

Cruz projected further improvement in employment situation for the rest of the year mainly due to improved weather conditions and continued demand for workers in the service sectors.

Pinoy seamen may lose jobs

Thousands of Filipino seamen may lose their jobs because of a disagreement between a large foreign ship management firm and a local manning agency.

Reports said the disagreement started when the Norway-based Barber Ship Management, one of the largest providers of third-party ships management services, sent a notice to NFD International Manning Agents Inc. terminating the agency agreement between them, effective November 2006.

The two firms entered into the agreement on Sept. 1, 2000.

Reports said Judge Oscar Pimentel of Makati City regional trial court has issued an injunction stopping Barber from carrying out the termination notice.

The ruling has raised the question of whether a court can intervene in a business transaction, reports added. — Mayen Jaymalin