UAE (19.9%), Qatar (8.7%), Hongkong (8.0%), Singapore (4.3yo), Kuwait (4.}yo),
Taiwan (4.0oh),Italy (2.3%), Canada (1.8%) and Bahrain (1.3%).
Overseas Filipino workers remain largely concentrated in low-skill and lowpaying work despite some increase in higher-paying work since the 1990s. Overseas
Filipinos as a whole are found in a wide range of service and industrial sectors - they
work in households, for multinationals and domestic firrns, and in other private and
public institutions of various sizes. OFWs however still remain largely concentrated in
low-skilland low-paying work notwithstanding some increase in higher-paying work
since the 1990s.
In the 1992-2008 period, according to POEA data, over two-thirds of newly-hired
OFWs were classified as service workers (37 .4%) or production workers (32.0%) rvhile
only a quarter were classified as professional and technical workers (25.0%). In 2008,
nearly all of the "service workers" are accounted for by domestic helpers and other
household workers, maids or cleaners in commercial establishments, cooks, waiters,
bartenders, caregivers and caretakers; domestic helpers in particular account for over twothirds of this skills classification. "Production workers" are mainly construction-related
jobs with some flactory-based work. The classification "proltssional and technical
workers" are mainly health professionals and engineers (about 75%o) although a
substantial portion are performers and other artists (nearly 10%).
Total annual deployments of new hires increased over the entire period lrorn
260,594 in 1992 to 337,730 in 2008. However there are two identifiable sub-periods
defined by trends in the three largest OFW skill categories so far: from 1992-2001 and
then200l-2008. In the sub-periodl992-200 l, the share ofprofbssional and technical
workers in new hires generally rose, from 2l .7oh in 1992 to 37 .7o/o in 2001 ; conversely,
the share of production workers fell from 36.5 to 22.0 percent. The share of service
workers was more or less stable. However after 200 I the share of professional and
technicalworkers started dropping and fell steeply to 13.4o/o in 2006 and rose only
slightly to 14.6%o in 2008. On the other hand, the share ofproduction workers rose
significantly to 39.2o/o in 2008 and that of service workers to 46.8Yo in 2006 before
dropping to 36.5o/o in 2008; these two categories combined accounted for eight of ten
deployments of newly-hired OFWs in 2008.
ln 2008, some 286,580 or nearly 9 out of 10 newly-hired OFWs were in working
jobs
class
- i.e., service workers, agricultural workers, production workers, sales workers,
clerical workers. These numbers even underestimate the number of such workers because
they only count contracts processed by the POEA and do not yet include undocumented
overseas Filipinos who are overwhelmingly in low-paying, low-skill working class jobs.
Survey-based estimates of the distribution of OFWs by occupation are consistent
u,ith this POEA administrative data on deployrnents. According to the Survey on
Overseas Filipinos (SOF) of the National Statistics Office (NSO), as of October 2008