Palace says think-tank's figure on less jobs created ''mathematically impossible''
Malacanang on Friday said the claim of IBON Foundation that the government only generated 81,000 jobs from 2017 to 2018 is “mathematically impossible”.
Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo said the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) and the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) recorded that the government generated 826,000 jobs in 2018.
“IBON Foundation's claim that the average annual job creation under the Duterte Administration equates to only 81,000 is thus mathematically impossible,” Panelo said in a statement.
He said the employment rate under the Duterte Administration remains “very good” registering as high as 95.3 percent in October 2016 to a low of 93.4 percent in January 2017 based on the data of PSA.
“One must therefore ask the methodology undertaken by IBON Foundation on how it arrived at its figures regarding the employment situation in the first two years of the Administration,” said Panelo.
“One must also ask if the said foundation is inept or just maliciously reckless to degrade the achievements of the President (Rodrigo Duterte),” he added.
In a statement released by IBON Foundation last January 24, the economy is slowing under the Duterte administration and that its first two full years registered the lowest level of job creation among post-Marcos administrations.
The foundation said growth is slowing down since the start of the Duterte administration, and is heading to its lowest in three years.
Gross domestic product (GDP) expanded 6.7 percent in 2016, slowed to 6.6 percent in 2017, and is down to 6.3 percent in the first three quarters of 2018, said the group.
“Meanwhile, average annual job creation for 2017 and 2018 is only 81,000. The number of employed only increased by 162,000 from 41 million in 2016 to 41.2 million in 2018, according to data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA),” it said.
IBON said this is below the annual average job creation under Corazon Aquino in 1987-1992 (810,000), Ramos in 1993-1998 (489,000), Estrada in 1999-2001 (842,000), Arroyo in 2002-2010 (764,000), and Benigno Aquino III in 2011-2016 (827,000) also as reported by the PSA.
“The Duterte administration should stop its fixation with growth figures because the growth it is hyping is not creating enough employment in the country. It would be better to accept the failure of neoliberal economic policies and instead protect and support domestic agriculture and Filipino industry to stimulate job creation and domestic development,” it said. Ella Dionisio/DMS
