The Senate sits as an impeachment court, and what the public sees, as the cameras roll, are lawyers making their arguments.

Senator-judges speak for the record. By any measure, it is a political and legal spectacle — one that will determine the fate of a vice president and perhaps influence the country’s next electoral contest.

Outside that chamber of acrimony, however, another trial is unfolding — far from the television cameras and before judges who wear no robes.

Research group IBON Foundation released figures that tell a story much closer to the daily realities of ordinary Filipinos: 2.5 million unemployed.

At the same time, another 663,000 people who had jobs a year ago no longer do. Nearly 30 million have drifted so far from the labor market that the government no longer counts them among the unemployed.

The two crises rarely share a headline. Perhaps they should, under the title: “The Spectacle and the Silence.”

The impeachment trial commands the attention of senators, lawyers, Cabinet officials, and the media. Every procedural motion becomes a story, while every expression of the senator-judges is analyzed.

The war against poverty remains muted, while the battle for political survival dominates the headlines.

That neglect is now manifesting itself in a weakening labor market, where four in 10 employed Filipinos work in the informal sector.

The data itself creates false hope, with indicators seemingly designed to support the government’s eagerness to announce upper-middle-income country status.

Employment, by the government’s definition, includes unpaid family workers, domestic helpers, and farm workers with neither contracts nor legal protection.

The economy is expected to provide jobs, but IBON’s data plainly suggests that it is failing to do so.

The officials’ preoccupation with courtroom drama pushes the employment crisis further into the background.

The impeachment trial will end. The jobs crisis will not. It worsens each day, with 905,000 agricultural jobs disappearing in a year, mostly rice and corn farmers abandoning land that no longer provides a decent livelihood.

IBON’s analysis thus points to a government that calls informal, insecure, and underpaid work “employment,” while describing a shrinking labor force as “progress” — choosing the appearance of success over its substance.

The global oil price shock triggered by the US attack on Iran in February accelerated inflation, driving up the cost of fuel as well as basic goods, services and utilities.

Inflation not only reached a three-year high but also recorded its steepest two-month increase since the 1990s, surging by 4.8 percentage points — from 2.4 percent in February to 7.2 percent in April 2026.

With wages failing to keep pace, more households are being squeezed by rising living costs.

IBON Foundation estimates that the nationwide average nominal minimum wage of P510 covered only 39 percent of the P1,312 family living wage for a family of five as of April 2026, leaving a daily shortfall of P802.

Although the gap narrowed slightly to P795 in May, the group said millions of Filipinos still struggled to earn enough to maintain a decent standard of living.

The hardships confronting ordinary Filipinos have little to do with the political battles unfolding in the impeachment court and far more to do with the economic burdens borne by households while the country’s leaders remain preoccupied with their political survival.