The Philippines’ unemployment rate climbed to 7.4 percent in January from 6.3 percent at the last quarterly survey in October, despite economic growth hitting a three-decade peak in 2007, data from the National Statistics Office showed yesterday.

Compared with the year ago level, however, the jobless rate eased slightly from 7.8 percent. The number of the jobless stood at 4.24 million last January, almost unchanged from 4.38 million. Still 140,000 more managed to get work within one one year, a fraction of the one million promised by President Arroyo.

The Philippines has one of the highest unemployment rates in Southeast Asia, contributing to growing poverty despite last year’s 7.3 percent economic growth, partly due to low levels of private and public investment, the Asian Development Bank said in a recent study.

The percentage of underemployed, those who have jobs but want to work more, also rose, to 18.9 percent of the employed in January from 18.1 percent in October, NSO data showed.

Arroyo has vowed to create one million jobs a year but has failed to deliver on that promise partly due to budget spending restraint as the government focused on controlling its fiscal deficit.

Manila and surrounding cities had the highest unemployment rate of 12.5 percent while the war-ravaged Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao had the lowest unemployment rate of 4 percent, the statistics office said. Unemployment tends to be lower in rural areas, because the majority of population works on family farms or hired as farm hands of big landowners.

Of the total unemployed, more than a third or 39 percent reached college level. One third were high school graduates.

The statistics office said the country’s total labor force was 36.4 million out of a total population of around 90 million.

The unemployment rate, which is a percentage of the total labor force, is comprised of people who have registered as being without work.

Of the 33.7 million people employed in January, half were in the services sector, more than a third were in agriculture and the rest were in the industries sector.

More than half of the employed, or nearly 52 percent, were wage and salary workers, while more than a third were own-account or self-employed workers. The rest were unpaid family workers.

Nearly two-thirds of the employed were full-time workers, or those working at least 40 hours a week. The rest were part-time workers.

Of the underemployed nearly half were in the agriculture sector, more than a third were in services and the rest were in the industry sector.

The NSO data showed that more males were out of work (7.8 percent) compared with females at 6.7 percent.

For every ten unemployed, five (49.6 percent) were in the age group 15-24 years, while three were in the age group 25-34. Around 39.0 percent of the unemployed had attained college level and 33.5 percent were high school graduates.

The labor force participation rate was however down at 63.4 percent of the total labor force compared to 64.8 percent in 2006. The country’s labor force grew by over a million in a year at 57.39 million from 56.14 million. (with reports from Reuters)