The country’s adjusted misery index dipped to 22.2% last year from 24.7% in 2022 mainly due to job quality improvement, based on latest data available from the Philippine Statistics Authority. In 2023, the underemployment rate hit an all-time low of 12.3% from 14.2% in 2022. The “misery index” is one way to measure the health of an economy which was formulated by the late American economist Arthur Okun in the 1970s. It is originally calculated as the sum of an economy’s unemployment and inflation rates to assess well-being. The higher the index, the worse the economy’s condition is. The infographic shows an “adjusted” version of the index which includes the underemployment rate* to account for job quality of those employed.
