P755 a Day: Dynasties, Corruption, and Cheap Labor Keep Us Poor
Ask any worker in Metro Manila what P755 can buy today and you will get a grim, knowing smile. That is the new daily minimum wage in the National Capital Region (NCR) starting Sept. 26 under Wage Order No. 28. It replaces Wage Order No. 27, which would have given an P85 increase, but was blocked by a court before it could take effect.
Ibon Foundation estimates the national average family living wage for a family of five at P1,301 to P1,312 a day (as of mid-2026). NCR already has one of the highest minimum wages in the country. On average, however, the minimum wage across all regions covers only 39 percent of what a family needs. That leaves a gap of about P800 a day. And that does not even count the millions who earn below minimum wage or have no fixed wage at all. That gap—and the millions of workers earning below even that—is the real state of the nation for workers.
Gross domestic product (GDP) growth has slowed every year from 7.6 percent in 2022 to 2.3 percent in the second quarter of 2026. Unemployment rose to 6.0 percent in July 2026. Underemployment has stayed between 12 percent and 15 percent all year. The oil crisis in the Middle East pushed inflation from 2.4 percent to 7.2 percent in two months, the sharpest spike since the 1990s.
According to Social Weather Stations, 52 percent of Filipino families now consider themselves poor, up from 42.8 percent when this administration started. National debt has also grown every year, from P13.42 trillion to P17.71 trillion. Debt is now 63.2 percent of GDP, the highest in 20 years. Much of our growth depends not on jobs here, but on Filipinos forced to leave. A record 2.7 million Filipinos were deployed abroad in 2025—about 7,000 a day. Their remittances prop up the growth figures the government likes to cite.
While workers absorb all this, the political class is busy with something else. Billions in flood control funds—for projects that exist only on paper or collapsed after the first rain—have been traced to contractors, local officials, and allies close to the administration. This has destroyed what little credibility the government had left.
When Congress finally passed an antipolitical dynasty law—a mandate from the 1987 Constitution that has waited almost 40 years—it made a version so weak it exempts most of the families now in power. A grassroots people’s initiative is now organizing for a stronger law.
The P755 minimum wage, the flood control scandal, and the toothless dynasty law are not three separate stories. They are symptoms of one disease: a governing class that answers to itself first, and to the people only when forced to.
We carry the economy while suffering from low wages, corruption, and dynastic rule.
We are not asking for charity, but for a living wage that is legislated and linked to the real cost of living, not left to wage boards influenced by employers; an end to contractualization; and a political system that finally answers to the people who keep it running.
With less than two years before the 2028 elections, Congress and the executive still have time to prove whose side they are on. They can legislate a living wage, end contractualization, conduct a full public accounting of flood control funds, and pass a genuine antidynasty law with real teeth. If they cannot do this, they should not expect another mandate from the very workers who have kept this economy alive despite everything.
Ka Rene Magtubo,
chair, Partido Manggagawa
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