Overseas Filipino workers

Every year, nearly one million Filipinos work overseas, about one-third of whom are engaged in unskilled labor, followed by trade-related jobs, such as factory machine operation and assembly, technicians, domestic helpers, supervisors, etc., and about half of them are women. In 2005, they remitted nearly10 billion dollars. This figure ranks fifth in the world after India, China, Mexico and France. However, in terms of GDP, this figure accounts for 13.5% of the total output, which is the highest among the top five countries and is supported by the economy and currency of the Philippines.

This overseas employment trend includes skilled workers going abroad for unskilled jobs, which leads to brain drain at home, especially in the fields of health care and education.