MANILA -- The irony of a “jobless growth” continues to hound the Philippines. Although the country posted the fastest economic acceleration in Southeast Asia in 2012, it remains as the cellar-dweller in terms of employment rate in the region.
The Philippines outpaced its usually better-performing Southeast Asian neighbors in 2012 in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) growth, with Indonesia at 6.2 percent, Malaysia 5.1 percent, Singapore 1.2 percent, Thailand 5.7 percent and Vietnam 5 percent.
The irony, however, is that when the number of jobless persons versus the population of the labor force was measured last year, the Philippines failed to beat even the smaller economies in the region. Full story
