AT the beginning of this month, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) released the unemployment data for November 2024, and the news was encouraging. The unemployment rate had fallen to 3.2 percent from 3.6 percent a year earlier and 3.9 percent in October, and the underemployment rate had declined to 10.8 percent, the second-lowest monthly rate of the entire year. Government officials were quick to congratulate themselves on the validation of current policies these incremental improvements represented, but when one steps back and looks at the Philippine employment situation as part of a bigger picture, the word that comes to mind most readily is 'stagnation.'

In a recent blog commentary, experts in social protection and employment from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) raised concerns about the preparedness of labor markets across Asia and the Pacific to respond to so-called megatrends, namely demographic shifts, technological evolution and climate change. These trends will fundamentally alter the social and economic makeup of countries, but on the whole, the region seems ill-prepared for them. Much of what the authors described would not have been inaccurate if it were applied to the Philippines specifically instead of the broader region.