Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA)
Definition
Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA)
The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) is the government body that produces the country’s official data. It is the main source for labor, wage, price and GDP figures, and most Philippine outsourcing business cases rest on a number the PSA published first.
Congress created the agency under Republic Act 10625, the Philippine Statistical Act of 2013. The law folded four offices — census, statistical coordination, agricultural and labor statistics — into one agency under the national planning authority.
That merger matters more than it sounds. Before it, employment, output and population counts came out of different offices on different calendars, and the versions did not always agree with each other.
Today the PSA is the single point of truth. If a figure about the Philippine workforce appears in a pitch deck, a government roadmap or a global database, it almost certainly started as a PSA release.
Key takeaways
- The PSA is the Philippines’ central statistics agency, created by Republic Act 10625 in 2013.
- It publishes the Labor Force Survey, the consumer price index, national accounts and the census.
- Its industry and occupation codes decide which jobs count as business process management work.
- Outsourcing buyers use PSA data for wage benchmarks, site selection and market sizing.
- PSA figures feed the World Bank, ILO and UN datasets that foreign investors read first.
How it works
The PSA collects, compiles and publishes official statistics on a fixed release calendar. Field teams survey households and businesses, the results are weighted to national and regional level, then posted free of charge on the agency’s own website.
| PSA output | What it measures | Typical cadence |
|---|---|---|
| Labor Force Survey | employment, unemployment, underemployment, hours worked | monthly rounds, with quarterly and annual averages |
| Consumer Price Index | inflation and cost of living, national and regional | monthly |
| National accounts | GDP and industry output, including business services | quarterly and annual |
| Census of Population and Housing | population, households, geographic spread | roughly every five years |
| Business and industry survey | employment and earnings by industry | annual |
Two of those releases carry most of the weight for outsourcing. The Labor Force Survey sizes the pool a provider can hire from, and the national accounts show how fast business services output is growing against the wider economy.
The PSA also owns the classification systems everything else hangs on. Its industry and occupation codes decide which jobs count as business process management, so labor cost comparisons only hold when both sides use the same code.
Everything is broken down by region, which is where the value sits for delivery planning. National unemployment tells you little — the regional figure tells you whether a second site in Cebu or Davao can staff up and stay staffed.
The PSA also coordinates the wider statistical system. Other departments run their own surveys, and the PSA sets the standards, clears the questionnaires and keeps definitions consistent across government.
Civil registration sits here too. The agency issues the birth, marriage and death certificates Philippine employers ask for at onboarding, and it runs the national ID register, so HR teams meet the PSA long before finance does.
Most series are free to pull from OpenSTAT, the agency’s open statistical database. A wide slice of the same material is mirrored on Open Data Philippines, the government’s central open data portal.
The release calendar is published in advance, which is the part planners care about. You can schedule a quarterly market review around known dates instead of waiting for a number to appear.
Examples
Outsourcing decisions lean on PSA numbers more often than people notice. Site selection, wage benchmarking, investor decks and industry roadmaps all pull from the same handful of releases, usually without crediting the agency that produced them.
Industry roadmaps start here. The IT and Business Process Association of the Philippines (IBPAP), the sector’s peak industry body, builds its headcount and revenue targets on official employment and national accounts data.
Site selection is the second use. A provider weighing Cebu against Davao or Iloilo reads PSA regional labor force and population data to judge which city can refill a large delivery floor year after year.
Zone reporting is the third. Locators inside the export zones run by PEZA, the Philippine Economic Zone Authority, file employment and export returns that end up inside the national totals.
Foreign datasets are the fourth. The Philippine indicators published by the World Bank begin life as PSA releases before they are standardised for cross-country comparison.
The same holds for the International Labour Organization, the UN agency that sets global labour standards, whose Philippine employment series rests on the definitions the PSA applies in the field.
The UN Statistics Division, the UN’s central statistical office, treats national statistical offices like the PSA as the primary suppliers behind its global data collections.
Wage benchmarking is the fifth use. Regional price and earnings data give a buyer a defensible floor and ceiling — well before anyone asks a provider for a rate card.
None of this is exotic work. It is the same three or four datasets, read carefully, that separate a credible Philippine business case from a guessed one.
Related terms
- National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA): the planning agency the PSA sits under and whose targets its data measures.
- Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE): the labor regulator that turns national employment data into policy and wage orders.
- Department of Trade and Industry (DTI): the trade and investment agency that markets the sector figures the PSA compiles.
- International Labour Organization (ILO): the UN body whose standards shape how the Philippines defines employment.
- Workforce Planner: the role inside a provider that turns national labor data into hiring plans.
FAQ
What does the Philippine Statistics Authority do?
The PSA produces the Philippines’ official statistics. That covers the Labor Force Survey, inflation, national accounts and the census, plus civil registration documents such as birth and marriage certificates.
When was the PSA created?
It was created by Republic Act 10625, the Philippine Statistical Act of 2013. The law merged the census office, the statistical coordination board, and the agricultural and labor statistics bureaus into one agency.
Which PSA data matters most for outsourcing?
The Labor Force Survey and the national accounts. The first tells you how large and how skilled the available workforce is; the second tells you how quickly business services output is growing.
How often does the PSA release labor data?
Employment figures come out on a monthly cycle, with quarterly and annual averages built on top of them. Prices are monthly, national accounts are quarterly, and the population census runs on a multi-year cycle.
Is PSA data free to use?
Yes. Headline releases and most detailed series are published free through the agency’s site and its OpenSTAT database, with attribution expected when you republish a figure.
Why do employers ask for a PSA birth certificate?
Because the PSA is the national civil registrar, so its certified copies are the version Philippine employers and government offices accept.
Sizing a Philippine team against those numbers is easier with market context, and Outsource Accelerator tracks the providers and pricing that sit alongside them.
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