The implication was, of course, that the labor market has expanded, or at the very least remained fairly stable during Duterte’s tenure. And like most economic data, labor statistics are fairly easy to manipulate to back any sort of conclusion one wants to draw from them. “Net employment generation means employment created net of employment lost,” Africa pointed out in IBON’s rebuttal to ECOP’s bizarre statement. Including other sectors, 2.2 million jobs disappeared in the period, while only 1.9 million new jobs were created; hence, a deficit of about 300,000 jobs. As I said near the top of this discussion, however, there is quite a bit of flexibility in labor data that makes any conclusion a bit uncertain.

Source: Manila Times September 15, 2018 16:30 UTC