Dead spots on digital jobs

Over the weekend, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) released its monthly Labor Force Survey showing the country’s unemployment and the quality of jobs in the market worsened as of April this year. From monthly monitoring of the PSA, the unemployment rate went up to 4.1 percent from 3.9 percent in the previous month and 4.0 percent in the same month last year. 

Despite the slight uptick in unemployment, the economic managers of President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. (PBBM) confidently believe these numbers remain on track to meet target unemployment range of 4.4 to 4.7 percent. In real numbers, there were 2.06 million jobless Filipinos in April this year. This is higher than the 1.93 million in the previous month and 2.04 million in April last year. 

PSA asserted this employment rate remains a “good indication of economic activities.” The real story here, comparing April 2024 to April 2025 to remove the seasonality factor, is labor participation rose from 340,000 while 317,009 of them got employed during that month. 

Of the total new jobs created, the PSA saw the biggest beneficiaries of gainful employment, or 213,000 of them, were those from age groups 55 to 59 years old, while 157,000 who got jobs were those from 60 to 65 years old and above. And from these age groups, the PSA reported, more males got jobs from retail trade, transportation and agriculture. “Perhaps, they were hired as drivers,” PSA chief Dennis Mapa mused aloud. 

Notably, the PSA labor force survey also coincided with the May 12 national and local election period. This was the period of massive political campaign activities happening all over our country. Hence, definitely new jobs were created, albeit most of them on temporary basis only.

There have been persistent fears, however, that the advances in modern technology pose the greatest threat to employment. Machines, robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) might soon displace people out of their present jobs. Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) Secretary Henry Aguda, however, reassures us there should be no worries about such dire prognostications.

In our Kapihan sa Manila Bay news forum last week, the newly installed DICT chief cited employment data showing there are as many as 13 million to 14 million “digitally-enabled jobs” at present all over our country. Once these areas get a boost from faster internet speed and wider connectivity, Aguda estimates it could generate eight million more “digital jobs” in the Philippines. 

On the occasion of June as the designated National ICT Month, Aguda announced the DICT is activating free WiFi sites in the farthest provinces of the country: Batanes to the north and Tawi-Tawi to the south. According to him, PBBM will join the ceremonial launching of the “Bayanihan SIM” (subscriber identification mode) cards to be distributed to students and families to get access to the free public WiFi system.

Aguda disclosed the DICT is assisting with the hook up of the online learning system of the Department of Education to some of the 7,000 Starlinks used in the transmission of the results of the just concluded midterm automated elections.

 Complying with one of the marching orders of PBBM is to triple the number of existing free WiFi sites. These are internet sites accessible to the public all around the country that the DICT targets to enlarge coverage before the end of the Marcos administration in June 2028.

Upon assumption into office last March, Aguda started putting in all the work to achieve the DICT target of activating 50,000 public internet sites. The idea is to connect the people to public WiFi they can freely access without paying any fees or needing any password.  

 The public WiFi system was actually mandated under Republic Act (RA)10929 that required the DICT to provide free internet access in all national and local government offices, public schools, public transport terminals, public hospitals and public libraries. It was signed into law by the late president Noynoy Aquino (PNoy) on Aug. 2, 2017. It was enacted a year after PNoy signed RA 10844 creating the DICT on May 20, 2016. 

But since then, the implementation of the public WiFi program has been spotty. 

Aguda is so far the fourth secretary since the DICT was created less than a decade ago. Despite being one of the three newly appointed Marcos Cabinet officials early this year, Aguda was among the first to submit his courtesy resignation following PBBM’s “resign all” demand last month. Just last week, Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin announced that Aguda was one of the 21 Cabinet officials whose courtesy resignations were declined by PBBM.

Aguda cited the DICT has so far installed around 18,000 of these public WiFi sites nationwide, funded under a special allocation in the annual national budget of the government. For this year, the General Appropriations Act (GAA) allocated P7.5 billion for the Free Public Internet Access Program (FPIAP). This amount is triple the P2.5 billion that the DICT got for the project in previous years.

The FPIAP sources its funding from “spectrum user fees” collected annually by the government from public telecommunications entities, or telcos for short. Before Aguda took over, the DICT was looking into a proposed long-term agreement with a satellite provider that can offer 200 Mbps level of connectivity for 10,000 schools at P1.5 billion. Aguda, however, wants this bidded out in public for full transparency.

For 2026, Aguda told us the DICT has sought budgetary support to allow his agency to double the coverage of digital services in these underserved communities, especially in the so-called GIDAS, or geogaphically isolated, disadvantaged areas. Describing technology as a “great equalizer,” the DICT chief admitted challenges to the connection of signals due to a lot of dead and blind spots across our archipelago. 

“Almost all of us are most digitally enabled,” Aguda quipped. While the Philippines supposedly enjoys 85 percent connectivity, Aguda wants to boost satellite modality to bridge the digital gap.