ACCORDING to the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), the unemployment rate in our country as of May 2024 is 4.1%. Can you believe that?
By the way, it is also the PSA that reports the poverty incidence in our country, and they said that as of the first semester of 2023, the poverty incidence is 22.4%. How can that be?
Somehow the numbers do not compute, and the PSA owes it to us to reconcile them.
Although I am not an economist, I am able to conjecture that if the unemployment rate is lower, then the poverty incidence should also be lower.
In layman terms, I could explain that the more people are employed, then there are more people who could afford the imaginary basket of goods, therefore there should be more people who could rise above the poverty line.
I do not know how the PSA does its computation, but as a University of the Philippines graduate with six units of statistics, I understand well enough that somehow, the minimum wage should have something to do with the poverty incidence.
I say that because I would like to imagine that anyone who is earning the minimum wage should already be above the poverty line, at least in theory.
Even if the PSA is supposed to be an independent agency, it is actually attached to the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) for purposes of coordination. I think that there could be a red flag in that relationship, because how can an authority be under another authority?
Since the head of the NEDA has the rank of Secretary, and the head of the PSA has the rank of Undersecretary, there could be some protocol problems.
I think that these protocol problems could lead to some conflicts of interests, because the head of the NEDA might want to paint a rosy picture of the economy, and it could be easy for him or her to convince the head of the PSA to help paint that picture through some slanted statistics.
So, what should be the real unemployment rate in the Philippines? For a start, it should include those who are underemployed.
