Region 8 posts 95.1% employment rate in 2022

By PSA-8
December 29, 2023

TACLOBAN CITY – In 2022, Eastern Visayas registered a Labor Force Participation Rate (LFPR) of 62.7 percent. This was 0.5 percentage point lower than the 63.2 percent LFPR reported in 2021. The 62.7 percent LFPR corresponds to around 2.04 million total population 15 years old and over who were either employed or unemployed in 2022.

Of the six (6) provinces in the region, Northern Samar registered the highest LFPR at 66.3 percent, corresponding to 290 thousand labor force during the year in review. This was followed by Samar, Biliran, and Southern Leyte with 65.6 percent, 65.0 percent, and 64.3 percent, respectively. Leyte posted the lowest LFPR at 60.3 percent. Tacloban City, the lone Highly Urbanized City (HUC) in the region, had 61.8 percent LFPR in 2022.

There were about 1.94 million employed persons out of the estimated 2.04 million labor force in 2022. This placed the region’s employment rate at 95.1 percent, higher by 1.7 percentage points and 3.1 percentage points than the employment rates in 2021 and 2020, respectively. However, this was lower by 0.5 percentage point compared with the 95.6 percent employment rate in 2019.

Among provinces in the region, Samar posted the highest employment rate in Eastern Visayas at 97.4 percent. Northern Samar was next with 95.7 percent employment rate, followed by Eastern Samar at 95.5 percent employment rate. Biliran and Leyte reported the lowest employment rate, both at 94.0 percent. Tacloban City recorded 94.4 percent employment rate during the year in review (Figure 1).

Eastern Visayas posted a 4.9 unemployment rate in 2022. This means that there were around 100 thousand unemployed persons out of the 2.04 million persons in the labor force in 2022. This showed an improvement from the 6.7 percent unemployment rate in 2021. This rate, however, was still higher compared with the 4.4 percent unemployment rate in 2019.

Among the provinces in Region 8, both Biliran and Leyte registered the highest unemployment rate at 6.0 percent, followed by Southern Leyte, Eastern Samar and Northern Samar at 5.5 percent, 4.5 percent and 4.3 percent, respecively. Samar posted the lowest unemployment rate at 2.6 percent. Meanwhile, Tacloban City posted 5.6 percent unemployment rate in 2022 (Figure 2).

Underemployed population is the proportion of employed population who expresses the desire to have additional hours of work in their present job, or an additional job, or to have a new job with longer working hours. Eastern Visayas recorded a 16.0 percent underemployment rate in 2022. This translates to about 310 thousand underemployed persons out of the 1.94 million employed persons in 2022. The region’s underemployment rate has been double-digit in the past three-year period at 20.3 percent in 2019, 20.1 percent in 2020, and 20.9 percent in 2021. However, improvement was noted in employment situation when it dropped to 16.0 percent in 2022, a decrease by 4.9 percentage points.

All provinces in the region reported double-digit underemployment rates. Biliran registered the highest underemployment rate at 26.5 percent, followed by Northern Samar and Southern Leyte, at 24.0 percent and 20.4 percent, respectively. Tacloban City posted the lowest underemployment rate at 11.4 percent (Figure 3).