Unemployment worsens in Aquino’s first year

THAT’S ACCORDING to the latest survey of the Social Weather Stations, commissioned by the BusinessWorld daily, and reported on Wednesday in all major newspapers except one.

According to the SWS survey undertaken March 4 to 7, 27.2 percent of respondents reported they were jobless. The downward trend is pretty clear: the unemployment rate was 23.5 percent in November 2010, and 20.5 percent when President Aquino assumed office.
If the SWS findings are extrapolated to represent national data, the March jobless rate means that Mr. Aquino has presided over an economy in which in just nine months 2.8 million were added to the ranks of the jobless, now totaling 11.3 million.

It will get worse by the time Mr. Aquino marks his first year in office. UP economist Raul Fabella was quoted as saying that the unemployment rate will rise in June as college students who graduated end of March normally do not immediately get work.

Based on the SWS figures, Mr. Aquino now has the distinction of being the first President in recent decades whose first year in office is marked by the steep worsening of unemployment.

(more…)

Continue ReadingUnemployment worsens in Aquino’s first year
  • Post author:
  • Reading time:5 mins read

A dime a dozen; that Porsche, again

HIS EYES moist with tears of joy, Red party Akbayan Rep. Teodoro Casiño said that the House of Representative’s 212 yes votes on March 22 to impeach Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez represented “overwhelming public sentiment” against her.

Casiño though was mum whether the resolution, two days later, of 204 of his colleagues to bury Akbayan’s arch hate-figure Ferdinand Marcos also represented overwhelming public sentiment to finally honor the dictator.  We also haven’t heard from Casiño whether the 191 votes to postpone the elections for officials of the Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao—which he claimed would be a travesty of justice—represent overwhelming public sentiment.

The lynch mob against Gutierrez has exploited the public’s unfamiliarity (actually even that of journalists who have not been Congress reporters) with the workings of the legislature to portray a bandwagon against her, which the Senate, they claim, cannot ignore. This of course is part of that old trick, now passé, to depict a popular groundswell against a  target  so that he or she will be so psychologically overwhelmed to just resign.

(more…)

Continue ReadingA dime a dozen; that Porsche, again