Last July 30, 2025, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) released the preliminary results of the 2024 Labor Market Statistics for Catanduanes, which posted the highest unemployment rate among 81 provinces in the country with 8.1 percent.
This meant that out of the 102,000 persons 15 years old and over who are in the island’s labor force, 8,000 were either out of work or seeking employment.
Included among the idle workers were those tired or believed that no work is available; awaiting the results of a job application; sidelined by illness or bad weather; or, waiting to be recalled by the previous employer.
While the underemployment rate improved from 21.9 percent in 2023 to 21.7 percent last year, the labor statistics showed a significant drop in the Labor Force Participation Rate (LFPR).
While the population increased by an average of 2,000 people each year from 2020 to 2024, the number of Catandunganons aged 15 years and older who were in the labor force decreased from 113,000 in 2022 to just 102,000 in 2024, even less than the 103,000 recorded in the 2020 survey.
This indicates that from 2022 to 2024, a total of 11,000 islanders were no longer in the labor force and had likely left the island to look for job opportunities elsewhere, either in the mainland cities or abroad.
It is probably no coincidence that the nine percent decline in the labor force occurred during the years that the hundreds of millions in infrastructure projects supposed to be implemented by the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) Catanduanes District Engineering Office were instead implemented by the regional office upon the instigation of a powerful politician.
It is also notable that during said years, a number of projects funded by partylist groups and politicians from outside the province were pulled out due to the “parking fee” demanded by the same politician.
It may be inferred that decisions of local politicians, even the capricious move to transfer the biddings of supposedly local projects to the regional office, have serious implications for the labor sector and the local economy.
Perhaps, most of the people should not wonder that the poverty incidence in Catanduanes rose to 30.6 percent in 2023, compared to just 23.5 percent in 2021.
Politics bring a key driver of employment in the island, expect the employment rate to rise in the first quarter of 2025 as most of the 272 candidates in the local elections hired campaign staff.
Of course, these campaigners numbering in a few thousands lost their jobs as soon as the votes were counted.
The ranks of the jobless grew by June 30, as the contracts of several hundred casual employees in five towns and in the provincial government expired.
Thus, the employment rate would fall by June and inch up again by the succeeding months as the new administrators replace the expired contracts with new ones for their own loyalists.
For decades now, this has been the case with local government units when a new leader takes over.
The problem is that among those laid off by the once-every-three-year purge are temporary workers who form part of key personnel implementing vital government programs.
Among those who lost their jobs in the election’s aftermath is Zenaida Baylosis, who has taken care of sea turtle nests in Talisoy, Virac for over a decade now, most of it as an unpaid volunteer.
It was only during the term of then Mayor Samuel Laynes that the native of Sipalay City, Negros Occidental was hired as job order worker for the sea turtle conservation and protection program of the Virac LGU.
Now that her contract has not been renewed and a new one with little experience in caring for the marine creatures has been hired, Baylosis is not letting what happened get in the way of what has become her vocation in life.
It is this kind of worker that every newly-elected politician should keep in the payroll, not those who are just in it to claim their wages every 15th and 30th of the month.