EXPLAINER | How the state failed the Filipino workforce

Ranked among the world’s worst for 9 years, the Philippines leaves over 9 million Filipinos either unemployed or trapped in unstable, poorly protected jobs.

Despite the government boasting of job creation, the labor market remains too weak to absorb new workers, offering mostly unstable, low-paying jobs that do little to lift Filipino workers out of poverty.

In April 2025, the Philippine Statistics Authority reported that 2.06 million Filipinos aged 15 and above were unemployed, marking an increase from 1.93 million in March 2025 and 2.04 million in April 2024. 

This pushed the unemployment rate up to 4.1%, from 3.9% in the previous month—despite the government's announcement that 317,000 jobs were added year-on-year and 650,000 more Filipinos joined the workforce between March and April.

However, a closer look at the data reveals that most of these jobs were in administrative support, the public sector, agriculture, and construction, which are often tied to short-term or informal employment. At the same time, significant job losses occurred in manufacturing and service industries.

Although 63.2 percent of employed Filipinos are wage and salary workers, about 35 percent are still self-employed or unpaid family workers, indicating that many new jobs remain insecure, low-paying, and insufficient to improve workers' lives.

Beneath the headline numbers is a harsher truth: the labor market is failing to keep pace with the growing workforce. The labor force participation rate rose to 63.7 percent, or about 50.74 million Filipinos, but not everyone who joined the labor force found work. 

This mismatch between labor supply and quality job creation reflects a systemic failure rooted not just in skill gaps, but in the structural decline of key sectors, uneven regional investment, and the persistence of informal work. 

As agriculture and manufacturing continue to shrink, and investment remains concentrated in a few regions, the economy struggles to generate stable, decent-paying jobs—leaving millions underemployed and still in poverty.

The rise in joblessness and underemployment reflects the Philippine state's longstanding prioritization of capital over labor. Government policies have tilted dangerously in favor of maintaining “investor confidence” while sidelining genuine labor rights protections.

Nowhere is this imbalance more visible than in the enduring prevalence of contractualization, which still denies millions of workers tenure, social protections, and collective bargaining rights.

According to the Federation of Free Workers (FFW), only 7% of private sector workers are unionized, and a minuscule 1.3% are covered by Collective Bargaining Agreements (CBAs)—a devastating sign of how deeply workers’ voices have been suppressed.

This figure is among the lowest in Southeast Asia. Unionization rates in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand range from 10% to 13%, while Vietnam reaches up to 40%. In the Philippines, labor remains largely voiceless—cornered by a system built to keep it that way.

The Philippines has once again earned its place in the 10 worst countries in the world for workers’ rights, according to the 2025 ITUC Global Rights Index, with the lowest rating of “5” for having no guarantee of rights. 

This is the ninth consecutive year the country has been red-flagged for brutal, systemic labor violations—including killings, red-tagging, abductions, trumped-up charges, and illegal arrests.

Between February 2023 and December 2024, the Federation of Free Workers (FFW) and the Danish Trade Union Development Agency (DTDA) documented 83 labor rights violations. These included:

Yet even with this avalanche of violations, there has been no substantial accountability. In the words of FFW President Sonny Matula, the government’s so-called reforms—like the Inter-Agency Committee for the Protection of Freedom of Association (FOA) created under Executive Order No. 23 (2023)—are largely toothless and performative.

“The guidelines do not even lay down any penalties or accountability for state security forces that violate workers’ right to FOA. It seems the government is also unwilling to allow workers to be represented in the inter-agency committee,” Matula said during a 2024 forum in Quezon City.

Nowhere is this violence more visible than in the state’s aggressive red-tagging of union leaders. In the Philippines, organizing for better wages can get you branded a communist, surveilled, arrested, or killed.

According to Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) Chairperson Elmer Labog, the very laws that should protect workers have instead become tools to suppress them: “If the right to strike were fully recognized by law, unionization rates would increase. Give us the right to strike, and I believe we can overcome the roadblocks thrown at workers, whether in the private or public sector.”

On September 29, 2023, 67-year-old veteran labor organizer Jude Thaddeus Fernandez was shot dead by operatives of the PNP-CIDG during a raid on his home in Binangonan, Rizal.

Police claimed he fired at them, but a fact-finding mission by KMU, rights groups, and lawmakers found no signs of resistance—only the body of an unarmed man who spent decades organizing workers for living wages and humane conditions.

 

Fernandez, who began his activism during the Marcos Sr. dictatorship, is one of 72 union leaders and members killed since 2016. His remains were withheld for days. KMU described the killing as “terrorist-esque,” calling it a brutal attack on the labor movement amid rising calls for wage hikes and justice.

Human Rights Watch has documented how red-tagging operates on the ground: local officials and police officers show up unannounced at the homes of union leaders, accuse them of NPA affiliations, and pressure their families to make them stop organizing. 

During the infamous “Bloody Sunday” in 2021, police and soldiers killed nine activists in a coordinated series of raids. Most of them had been red-tagged.

Many workers still hesitate to unionize out of fear for their safety—and that fear is not unfounded. Of the 1.68 million unionized workers in the private sector, only 319,240 are covered by collective bargaining agreements, severely limiting their power to negotiate for better wages and working conditions.

Noel Baron, union president at Ebara Pumps Philippines Inc. in Laguna, is one of many who have experienced the risks firsthand. Since 2022, he has been harassed at least nine times by armed men and suspected state agents warning him to cut ties with the Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU). 

In April 2023, he came home to find two masked men on an unlicensed motorcycle stationed outside his house. They told him, point blank, that he was on a “watchlist” and needed to “clear his name.”

It wasn’t the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last. They came in uniforms, then in civilian clothes. They used barangay officials, former union members, and even his own family to pressure him into abandoning the union. Baron said the harassment has pushed union officers to quit—leaving just two leaders still standing. Some days, Baron doesn’t even go home. “The fear and anxiety never went away,” he said.

Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in the Philippines were introduced to attract foreign investment, boost exports, and generate jobs—often through tax holidays, relaxed regulations, and reduced import/export duties. Since their inception via Republic Act No. 7916, SEZs have grown rapidly, with over 300 established by 2015, mainly in the manufacturing and IT sectors.

However, these gains come at a cost. SEZs are often built on fertile agricultural lands, displacing thousands of farmers, fisherfolk, and indigenous communities. 

One telling example is the Aurora Pacific Economic Zone and Freeport (APECO), which faced intense opposition in 2012 when 120 Casiguran farmers and Agtas marched to Manila to protest the seizure of their ancestral lands. Despite receiving billions in government funding, the project attracted little investor interest and delivered minimal economic returns.

Critics argue that while SEZs do generate employment, they also deepen inequality, displace rural populations, and lead to unbalanced development. Many zones operate in isolation, offering minimal local benefits and facilitating exploitative practices—including labor rights rollbacks and, in some cases, smuggling.

Despite state-led efforts to boost employment and uphold freedom of association, millions of Filipino workers still face unstable jobs, low wages, and limited bargaining power. 

Union membership remains low, protections are often absent, and documented violations ranging from illegal dismissals to killings persist with little accountability. The labor market may be growing in numbers, but not in dignity or security. For much of the workforce, employment is no longer a path out of poverty—it is where poverty persists.