MANILA — A think tank on Tuesday questioned the government's claim of improvements in the labor market in the country.

According to IBON Foundation executive director Sonny Africa, self-rated poverty is still rising due to the lack of better job opportunities combined with low wages and high inflation.

"The employment situation is not improving. There are actually 200,000 less work [jobs] in March this year compared to in February," he told ANC's "Rundown".

"The fact that you have less jobs, you have jobs being mostly informal work despite recovery, and the fact that you also have wages not increasing, I think that goes a very long way to explain why so many Filipino families, unfortunately, do still feel very poor," he added.

• 51 percent of Filipino families say they're poor: SWS

The latest survey conducted by the Social Weather Stations revealed that some 51 percent of Filipino families considered themselves poor in the first quarter of 2023.

This translates to around 14 million families, up from the 12.9 million in December 2022, the pollster has said.

Meanwhile, the country's unemployment rate came in at 4.7 percent in March, slightly lower compared to 4.8 percent in February.

This was equivalent to 2.42 million Filipino workers who were jobless out of 51 million in the labor force.

The underemployment rate also fell to 11.2 percent in March from 12.9 percent in February. Underemployed workers have jobs but wish to add more work hours.

• PH unemployment rate dips to 4.7 pct in March

"Because of this hiring ng private firms, in particular 'yung mga private establishments, dun nanggaling 'yung pagbaba ng underemployed. So, what we can surmise is that mas marami dito mga full-time jobs ang hina-hire ng private establishments," Philippine Statistics Authority Undersecretary Dennis Mapa has said.

Mapa has added that the economy is opening up so many are hiring full-time work but he couldn't say all of those are high-quality jobs.

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