THE country’s job market continues to improve despite the 6-percent unemployment rate in June 2022, Finance Secretary Benjamin Diokno said on Wednesday.

Even though the June employment rate stayed the same as the 94 percent recorded a month ago, Diokno said in a statement earlier that the labor market continued to look promising.

In addition, Dionko pointed out that the average weekly hours worked, and the labor force participation rate went up, underemployment decreased, and the youth employment rate increased.

“The [labor force participation rate (LFPR)] at 64.8 was higher than the May LFPR at 64.0 percent, implying that more workers have actively joined the labor force,” said Diokno.

“The quality of jobs has improved, too. The average weekly hours worked by an employed worker in June was estimated at 40.3 hours per week, up from the mean hours worked in May (39.8 hours),” he added.

The visible underemployment rate, or the percentage of those working fewer than 40 hours per week, was estimated at 8.5 percent.

The Philippine Statistics Authority said that from 46.08 million employed Filipinos in May 2022, the number of Filipinos with work reached 46.59 million in June 2022. This percentage was greater than the 92.3-percent rate that was recorded during the same time period in 2021.

Despite that, the month-tomonth unemployment rate in June 2022 stayed steady at 6 percent, or 2.99 million Filipinos out of 49.58 million people in the labor market. The rate was lower than the 7.7 percent recorded in June 2021.

The underemployment rate decreased from 14.5 percent in May 2022 to 12.6 percent in June 2022.