The labor migration policy of the Philippine government allows and encourages emigration. The Department of Foreign Affairs, which is one of the government's arms of emigration, grants Filipinos passports that allow entry to foreign countries. In 1952, the Philippine government formed the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) as the agency responsible for opening the benefits of the overseas employment program. In 1995, it enacted the Migrant Workers and Overseas Filipino Act in order to "institute the policies of overseas employment and establish a higher standard of protection and promotion of the welfare of migrant workers and their families and overseas Filipinos in distress." In 2022, the Department of Migrant Workers was formed, incorporating the POEA with its functions and mandate becoming the backbone of the new executive department.
Profile
Number of Filipino migrants
Demographics
Gender
Among the Filipino migrants, there is a significant amount of migrants that are Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW). One of the recent trends in Filipino contractual workers is that as years pass by, more and more women have traveled out of the country, outnumbering the men. This can be attributed to the fact that domestic helpers and entertainers are in-demand globally. In fact entertainers destined for Japan and other countries have increased from 3.3% to 18.9% in a span of a decade from 1983 to 1984. As of 2009, the most Filipinos work as household service workers. Out of the total of 71, 557 household workers, 69,669 are women.
According to the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), many of the OFWs are Overseas Contract Workers (OCW).
Age
OFWs are distributed among different age groups. The 25-29 age bracket comprises more OFWs than the other age groups.
Origin
OFWs come from all parts of the country, and many of them come from provinces of the Philippines.
Destination
According to the World Bank, 4,275,200 Filipinos have emigrated out of the country as of 2010. Among those who travel abroad are Overseas Contractual Workers (41%), immigrants (29%) and those who are undocumented (30%). As of 2009, 1,422,586 Filipino workers have contributed to remittances from abroad. According to the book Philippine Labour Migration, these workers can be categorized into eight criteria, by type, countries of deployment, gender, rural or urban origin, civil status, age, education and skills, and occupation.
OFW Destinations
Although many permanent migrants are residing in the Americas, most OFWs are working in Asian countries. As of 2013, the top destinations for OFWs are Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Hong Kong, and Singapore.
Usual occupations
Number of Deployed Landbased Overseas Filipino Workers by Major Occupational Category, New Hires
Remittances from overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) A chart on the cash and personal remittances of OFWs in millions of US Dollars
* Remittances coursed through a bank
**Partial data only until April 2015
A chart on remittances of OFWs according to regions in millions of US dollars
*Partial data only until April 2015
Migration policy
History
The history of Philippine labor migration policies can be traced as far back as 1521, when the Filipino natives started to man ships in the Manila–Acapulco galleon trade. Filipinos started working in the dockyards and aboard ships traveling as far as Mexico, under the mandate of Spanish colonizers. In order to escape maltreatment by the Spaniards, many of those Filipino workers resorted to "jumping ship", settling in state ports like Acapulco, Mexico and Louisiana, USA. They were the first generation of Filipino labor migrants. Since then, three "waves" of labor migration occurred (in the 1900-1940's, the 1940s-1970's, and the 1970s-1990's), each wave taking the Philippines closer to becoming one of the world's largest labor exporting countries, as it is today.