The county’s statistics agency has counted the number of hands at work in farms across the country and found their ranks thinning fast. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO

Labor turnover rate continued to decline in the agriculture, forestry and fishery sector during the third quarter of 2018, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) said.

The sector posted a negative turnover rate of 0.4 percent based on PSA’s Labor Turnover Survey. This was due to the separation rate, at 4.7 percent, increasing at a faster pace than the accession rate of 4.3 percent.

PSA defined separations as employment terminations due to “quits or terminations initiated by employees,” or the “layoffs or terminations initiated by employers due to economic reasons” such as the lack of market, financial losses, redundancy, end of contract, as well as non-economic reasons such as gross negligence and absence without leave.

Accessions, meanwhile, refer to the permanent or temporary employment additions in the establishment spurred by business expansion, and the replacement of separated workers due to changes in production or service methods or technology.

Compared to the agriculture, forestry and fishery sector’s decline, the services sector grew the most of the major sectors at 8.9 percent accession rate and 7.5 percent separation rate.

This led to a minimal increase of 1.3 percent during the July to September period.

“Across industries under this sector, significant employment growths were posted in private education at 3.3 percent. This was followed by wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles, motorcycles (2.5 percent); financial and insurance activities (1.6 percent); and arts, entertainment and recreation (1.4 percent),” the statistics agency elaborated.

The industry sector, meanwhile, also declined by 0.1 percent, weighed down by three out of five sub-sectors garnering higher worker separations than accessions.

“Under this group, employment loss was mostly observed in the construction industry at 0.8 percent. This offset the 0.6 percent gain in employment in mining and quarrying,” PSA said.

Overall, the employment growth in the country for the third quarter period of 2018 was sluggish at 0.9 percent, 0.8 percent lower compared to the previous quarter’s 1.7 percent gain.

Accession rate was at 9.5 percent, a decrease side by side the previous quarter’s 11.0 percent. Separation rate also slowed down to 8.6 percent, compared to the 9.3 percent April to June figure.

With accession being higher than separation, PSA denoted that for every 1,000 workers during the period, 95 workers were hired either for business expansion or replacement, while 86 workers were either laid-off or quit their jobs.