MANILA, Philippines: The labor market deteriorated as the number of jobless Filipinos rose anew, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) reported on Wednesday.

The country's jobless rate picked up to 3.9 percent in March from 3.5 percent in February but lower than the 4.7 percent in the same month of last year.

This translates to 2 million unemployed Filipinos, 200,000 more than February's figure of 1.80 million. It is, however, lower than the 2.42 million in March of last year, reflecting a year-on-year drop of 420,000 unemployed individuals.

Meanwhile, underemployment — which counts those looking for more work or an extra job — declined further to 11.0 percent from 12.4 percent in February and in March 2023 of 11.2 percent.

The number of underemployment was equivalent to 5.39 million. These are people "who have expressed the desire to have additional hours of work in their present job or to have additional jobs, or to have a new job with long hours of work."

The PSA saw a downtick in the employment rate, which declined to 96.1 percent from 96.5 percent in February but higher than March 2023 at 95.3 percent.

The number of individuals with jobs, however, reached 49.15 million in March, higher than the number of employed persons in the same month of 2023 at 48.58 million and February 2024 at 48.95 million.

The services sector continued to dominate the labor market in March in terms of the number of employed persons with a share of 61.4 percent.

The country's Labor Force Participation Rate (LFPR) in March was registered at 65.3 percent, higher than February's 64.8 percent but lower than March of last year at 66.0 percent.