Philippine jobless rate slips to 7.1% in Oct

Via abs-cbnNEWS.com 12/15/2009 MANILA, Philippines - A total of 2.72 million Filipinos were unemployed last October as the country's jobless rate slipped to 7.1% for that month, the National Statistics Office said Tuesday.

The NSO said the unemployment rate dipped from the previous 7.6% recorded in July, totaling 2.92 million Filipinos unemployed for the month. It was higher than the 6.8% unemployment rate recorded in October 2008.
The National Capital Region posted the highest unemployment rate at 11.8% while the lowest was in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao at 1.8%. The number of unemployed persons was higher among males (63.8%) than among females (36.2%) while about half (50.3%) of the unemployed were in age group 15-24 years.

The total labor force fell slightly to 38.2 million people in October from 38.4 million in July.

Under-employed workers dropped to 6.87 million from 7 million in July.  Nearly 60% of the under-employed, mostly from the agriculture and services sector, worked for less than 40 hours a week in October.

Continue reading here http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/business/12/15/09/philippine-jobless-rate-slips-71-oct