Organized workers weren’t the only ones who welcomed the increase of P85 in the daily minimum wage in the National Capital Region.
Lawmakers, who want control over wage fixing, also lauded the increase, described as a “historic high” by Labor Secretary Francis Tolentino.
The politician-turned-Cabinet secretary yesterday announced the wage hike, from the current P695 daily to P780 for non-agriculture workers. The increase would be implemented in two tranches: P60 beginning July 19, and P25 in January 2027.
It’s unclear if the highest-ever wage hike in the NCR heeded inputs from the employers’ representatives in the Regional Wage and Productivity Board. Workers’ groups want an increase of P200 daily.
Tolentino estimated that the increase would benefit over 1.1 million wage earners. This presumes that they will all get to keep their jobs once the P60 increase – amounting to P2,400 a month for a five-day workweek – is implemented.
It also presumes that the businesses where the workers are employed will remain afloat, amid the economic slowdown arising from the Middle East crisis and other headwinds both global and domestic.
A wage increase affects not only minimum wage earners, but also salary scales across an enterprise. The Middle East conflict has led to warnings of stagflation in the country, which is bad news for workers and employers alike.
Even before the fuel crisis, players in several industries were already beginning to cut jobs that could be replaced by artificial intelligence. Several companies have invested in upskilling of workers, because even AI needs some human supervision, and the rapid evolution of AI also calls for new skills. But keeping jobs is being outpaced by redundancy due to the dizzying advances in technology.
The construction sector, which employs many daily wage earners, has yet to recover from the tsunami that devastated the industry after the flood control corruption probe froze public works projects beginning in mid-2025. That freeze was a major factor in pulling down gross domestic product growth for 2025, with the impact expected to be carried over to GDP figures this year.
For workers, higher pay is of course always welcome news. The higher the pay, the better for morale, and the greater the productivity. Even employers acknowledge this. But their capacity to pay those higher wages, preserve jobs and keep their businesses open cannot be ignored.
The amounts have been set and credits claimed for the “historic high” wage increase. Now comes the hard part: its implementation.