“The main reason is the first-time graduates of K-12 in 2022 who will increase labor supply temporarily before normalizing in the following years as the economy adjusts,” Chua said. “Note that in 2016, we started the new school system so plus two years of senior high school then four years of college, so we’ll see the impact in 2022,” Chua added.
Economic managers last week said the Philippines would remain under less restrictive quarantine early next year until such time that up to three-fifths of the population gets vaccinated with an effective and widely available coronavirus shot to end the pandemic and resume 100 percent of the economy, seen happening by end-2021 or early 2022.
This year, the four rounds of the quarterly Labor Force Survey yielded a jobless rate averaging 10.2 percent:A record 17.6 percent in April at the height of the longest and most stringent COVID-19 lockdown in the regionThe Philippine Statistics Authority earlier said the 2020 unemployment average was the highest since the government adopted its current definition of employment in 2005.