Philippine unemployment: 3.8% or 2.2%?

The IMF relays the national rate of the Philippine Statistics Authority, whose 2005 definition — an optional provision of the international standards — counts as unemployed people who are available but not actively searching, such as discouraged workers or applicants awaiting an answer. The ILO recomputes the rate from the same survey's microdata applying the strict active-search criterion, which removes roughly two-fifths of the nationally counted unemployed and prints 2.2%.