The Gendered Effect of Philippine Economic Structural Transformation on on Employment Creation and Decent Work

Abstract

The Philippine economy has accelerated rapidly in the past two decades with a sharper uptake in the period 2010-2017 as indicated by a GDP growth that averaged 6.1 percent annually. This was associated with a declining agriculture sector share in output and employment and a shift towards primarily the services sector, largely bypassing  industrialization. Employment growth persistently lagged behind GDP growth resulting in a diminishing employment elasticity from 0.72 in the period 2000-2005 to 0.26 in 2010-2017. In the latter period, women workers were largely left behind from partaking of the fruits of a rapidly growing economy with women employment elasticity of 0.18 compared with the 0.31 for their male counterparts. The high prevalence of labor underutilization and informal employment amidst a thriving economy has also a gender dimension with women workers being persistently more likely to hold informal jobs while men workers were more likely to be underemployed even in wage employment. Philippine economic growth has also failed to optimize its demographic
dividend with the youth suffering from unemployment rates