Farmers group blames Marcos admin for higher unemployment rate

Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas Chairperson Danilo Ramos. Danilo Ramos/Facebook

MANILA, Philippines — Farmers group Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) has slammed the administration of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., for the higher recorded unemployment rate in April, asserting that “the government is out of touch and indifferent to the real crisis faced by the masses.”

The Philippine Statistics Authority reported on Friday that there were 2.06 million unemployed Filipinos in April—higher than the 1.93 million jobless recorded in March.

READ: Joblessness in the Philippines worsens in April

“The constant rise in unemployment is not merely a ‘skills mismatch’ issue — it is a direct consequence of a stagnant agriculture and industrial sectors, which should be vital sources of sustainable jobs,” KMP chair Danilo Ramos said in a statement on Saturday.

“Marcos Jr. boasts of economic resilience, but what we see is a government completely out of touch — indifferent to the real crisis faced by the masses, and ignoring the Philippine economy’s persistent failure to generate decent-paying work,” he added.

According to Ramos, the latest record from the PSA has confirmed that the “agriculture sector is bleeding out.”

He mentioned that over 609,000 agricultural jobs were lost from March 2024 to April 2025. Approximately 483,000 of this was linked to palay (rice) production.

“The lost jobs in rice farming are not just statistics. They are farming families who have lost their livelihoods due to high farming costs, importations, and other basic problems in agriculture,” Ramos said in Filipino.

“These job losses in agriculture are proof that Marcos Jr.’s promises are nothing but empty slogans,” he added./mr