A deescalation to Alert Level 1 in the National Capital Region and key cities and provinces would readily create 500,000 jobs, but this should ramp up to 800,000 over time or close to recovering the employment lost during the pandemic in the entire country, Trade and Industry Secretary Ramon M. Lopez said.
Lopez said this as NCR and key cities and provinces will deescalate to Alert Level 1, the most relaxed form of restrictions, starting Tuesday, March 1.
“Hopefully for the first batch of deescalation we can hit about 500,000 jobs with all parts of the economy functioning again,” he said. But Lopez said that jobs generation would increase over time to 800,000 once the next batch of areas deescalate to Alert Level 1 where establishments would be allowed to run at full operating capacity.
Lopez said this should bring back the country’s unemployment rate closer to the pre-pandemic level. “Yes we are getting close to it (recovering the jobs lost to pandemic),” he said.
“Am basing on hitting pre-pandemic unemployment rate of 5 percent which was our average before. Thus, we can expect to generate 800,000 more jobs over time for the entire country once we remove the balance restrictions,” the trade chief said.
Lopez said more workers can return to work because businesses will have lesser restrictions on the remaining operating capacity under Alert Level 1. Lesser restrictions will be implemented under Alert Level l, including the removal of physical or acrylic barriers to allow more capacities in restaurants and establishments.
But Lopez stressed that establishments must continue requiring the wearing of mask, regular disinfection, ventilation and vaccination.
Business community can expect lesser restrictions, on remaining operating capacity, removal of physical barriers, work from home as optional.
Lopez said that 5.2 million jobs were created from Jan. 2020 to December 2021, including the over 900,000 employment generated under the National Economic Recovery Strategy (NERS) Program. This resulted in the improvement in the unemployment rate to 6.6 percent from a high of 17.7 percent in March 2020.
Meantime, the Employers Confederation of the Philippines (ECOP) reiterated they would be able to generate one million jobs this year in continued partnership with the DTI and NERS program.
Perry Ferrer, ECOP job creation committee chairman and governor, said the 2022 goal is on top of the 600,000 jobs they contributed from June to December 2021, mostly coming from the IT business process management industry.
It could be recalled that ECOP committed to generate one million jobs in 2021, but was short of 400,000 jobs because of the continuing restrictions last year.
“Although the project did not reach the targeted jobs created for 2021 due to the prevailing quarantine and mobility restrictions on goods and people, the partnership will continue this year and ECOP reiterates its commitment to continue working on creating, saving, and transforming jobs for 2022,” said ECOP President Sergio Ortiz-Luis Jr.
DTI also reported that the country’s employment rate reached its highest, so far, this pandemic period, at 93.5 percent or equivalent to 45.5 million employed persons with an increase of 1.7 million employed persons observed month-on-month, between October-November.