BUILDING the country’s roads and railways proved to be the biggest source of jobs in the construction industry in 2022, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).
The agency’s latest Annual Survey of Philippine Business and Industry showed that the construction of roads and railways hired 98,198 workers that year, accounting for over a third of all workers in the sector.
The broader construction industry employed a total of 286,849 people in 2022, up 6.1 percent from the previous year’s 270,311. Almost all of them, or 99.8 percent, were paid employees.
Demolition and site preparation had the leanest workforce with only 3,063 people on record.
Metro Manila continued to be the country’s construction hub, accounting for 56 percent or 160,781 workers. It was followed by Calabarzon with 34,964 workers and Central Visayas with 19,747.
Firms in the construction sector employed an average of 128 workers each in 2022, up from 118 the year before.
Meanwhile, companies engaged in road and railway construction had the largest workforce per establishment, averaging 282 workers, followed by demolition and site preparation firms with 236.
Caraga recorded the highest average employment at 197 workers per establishment, while the National Capital Region followed closely with 188.
The PSA counted 2,239 construction firms nationwide in 2022, slightly fewer than the 2,293 tallied in 2021. The biggest slice came from companies engaged in building construction, which made up 44 percent of the total.
They were followed by firms handling electrical, plumbing, and other installation works, and then by road and railway builders. Only 13 companies were involved in demolition and site preparation.
Metro Manila also topped the count of establishments, hosting 856 or nearly two in every five construction firms in the country.
Workers in the sector received a combined P69.79 billion in compensation in 2022, equivalent to an average annual pay of P243,800 per worker. This was a 6 percent increase from 2021.
Total revenue reached P636.24 billion, up nearly 14 percent from the previous year. Expenses rose at the same pace to P554.87 billion, keeping the industry’s revenue-to-expense ratio steady at P1.15 for every peso spent.
The Annual Survey of Philippine Business and Industry is one of the PSA’s flagship data programs, designed to capture performance and employment trends across key sectors of the formal economy.