BAGUIO CITY – The Cordillera office of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA-CAR) reported that the region’s labor force participation rate of persons whose age was 15 and over was estimated at 62.5 percent or about 806,000 individuals.
The PSA-CAR explained that the labor force survey provides a snapshot or the stock of economically active persons in the country at point or reference period.
Further, it aims to monitor the changes in the employment status of persons in the working age population whether employed, unemployed and not in the labor force, during a specified period using the labor force framework.
The labor force survey concept and measurement strictly follows the international standards concerning statistics of the economically active population, employment, unemployment and underemployment adopted by the 13th international conference of labor statistics in October 1982 in Geneva, Switzerland.
PSA-CAR reported that long with other regions, the Cordillera had a labor force participation rate higher than the national rate of 61.4 percent.
The region’s labor force participation rate increased by 2.3 percent in April last year compared to the 6.2 percent rate during the same period the previous year.
The PSA-CAR claimed that there was a slight increase in the number of employed persons from 96.7 percent in April 218 to 97.1 percent in April last year.
Of the 806,000 employed persons in the Cordillera in April last year, 65.5 percent or about 495,884 individuals were males, while 38.5 percent or about 310,431 individuals were females.
However, there was a slight decrease in the number of employed males in the region by 0.9 percent and that the decrease in the number of employed males corresponded to the increase in the percentage of employed females in the region.
According to the PSA-CAR, in terms of educational attainment, 38.6 percent had junior high school education of which 26.6 percent graduated while 11 percent did not graduate.
Employed persons with college education followed with 28.9 percent of the total employed persons in the region wherein 20.9 percent are degree holders while 8 percent did not finish college.
With a share of 24.3 percent of employed persons, elementary level education came third of the total employed persons in the region wherein 13.4 percent graduated and 10.9 percent did not graduate.
Employed persons with post-secondary level education accounted to only 5.1 percent of the total employed persons in the region wherein there were only 3.4 employed persons who graduated while 1.7 percent were under graduates.
On the other hand, employed persons in the region with no grade level completed was at only 1 percent which had the lowest incidents of employment in the region.
The PSA-CAR claimed that agriculture, hunting and forestry continued to be the biggest employer in the region by sub-industry group with 4.9 percent share followed by wholesale and retail trade with 12.7 percent share whole repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles ranked as the second largest employer in the region.
3.1 percent of the total employed persons in the region work in manufacturing despite being one of the biggest contributor to the region’s economy.
By HENT