Something a tricycle driver and the president of the Philippines have in common is that both are considered employed.
According to the Philippine Statistics Authority, anyone who works for at least an hour for pay during a reference period counts as part of the country’s employment figures. Having learned this, I’ve progressively taught myself to question and perceive the numbers presented on news headlines beyond their face value.
A few months ago, a report revealed that the Philippines attained an unemployment rate of 4.3 percent in 2024, its lowest in two decades. President Marcos Jr. credited this achievement to what he described as the country’s “vibrant economic performance” and his administration’s aggressive efforts to attract more investors in the Philippines.
In different circumstances, I would be impressed by this information and have no further qualms. But after moving to Manila for college and being confronted by scenes of women cradling infants while selling fish, sorbetes vendors struggling to push their carts through flooded streets, and children of tricycle drivers asleep in the cramped backseats of their vehicles, they opened my eyes to a reality I now witness every day as I walk to DLSU for class. These were the faces of “employment” that statistics had flattened into a single percentage.
At heart, I found it incredibly difficult to envision the “vibrant economy” that the President otherwise proudly described, seeing that many of the Filipino workers we count as “employed” still lack formal benefits such as health insurance, housing support, legal protection, and a steady income necessary to sustain a life beyond mere daily survival. How much of their earnings are spent on food alone? How much can they actually set aside for the following days? And how much, if any, remains for emergency funds or hospital bills when illness or disaster strikes?
While figures on news reports suggest that more Filipinos are employed, more work does not always mean better work. Some may argue that having a job is at least better than having none at all, yet it remains tragic that for years or even decades, many of our citizens remain in low-paying, insecure, and vulnerable work—a cycle that traps families into poverty for generations.
In economic terms, these individuals are regarded as “informal workers.” The tricycle sector, for instance, has remained largely informal, unregulated, and exposed to systemic neglect for the longest time. Earlier this year, research group IBON Foundation estimated that informal workers constitute 42 percent of the total employed population, citing them as the reason behind rising employment claims from the government.
While there is flexibility and ease in informality, the people in this kind of work ultimately endure the heaviest burden during times of crisis due to insufficient monetary savings and lack of formal measures to serve as their safety nets. While welcoming foreign investors has its merits, the government should equally prioritize helping informal workers shift into formal and secure jobs. This can be done through simplifying bureaucratic processes that push several Filipinos to remain in the informal sector in the first place.
The informal sector is estimated to make up at least one-third of our Gross Domestic Product, helping sustain big businesses and keeping the Philippine economy afloat. It is distressing to ponder how much more they could contribute if only they were given the means to strengthen their productivity, efficiency, and security to begin with. Among these are the long-overdue passage of the Magna Carta for Informal Workers, the development of more accurate systems to measure or document informality, and the provision of accessible social protections.
While others dignify megacorporations and foreign investors as the ultimate drivers of economic growth, it is the tricycle drivers and street vendors I encountered who have shaped my understanding of what it means—and what it does not mean—to be meaningfully employed in a supposedly vibrant economy.
As the Marcos administration buries the harsh realities of working Filipinos behind bright headlines of low unemployment rates, this substantial part of our labor force remains heavily underrepresented and undervalued. When the government limits its notion of progress to merely creating jobs, it turns a blind eye to the generations of workers trapped in inhumane conditions and the struggles they face every day.
Until every Filipino worker secures a job that guarantees more than mere day-to-day survival, no accountable administration earns the right to regard the Philippines as an economically vibrant nation.
This article was published in The LaSallian‘s October 2025 issue. To read more, visit bit.ly/TLSOct2025.
