The growth of annual outflow
Since its inception in the early 1970s, labor migration from the Philippines has constantly increased in a seemingly unstoppable expansion (Table 1). There are some stages that can be traced in the times series spanning almost 40 years. The stages are determined by internal policies or external factors, which had a direct impact on migrant outflow.
The first period goes from the early 1970s to 1978, when the government direct management of overseas labor was discontinued, after been instituted in the 1974 Philippine Labor Code, which created the overseas employment program as a stop‐gap measure to relieve unemployment and generate foreign exchange. Although the number of land‐based overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) reached 50,000 in that year, the growth paled in comparison to the jump during the following stage. After allowing the involvement of private recruiters, the entrepreneurship of the private sector coupled with increasing demand in the Gulf countries led to a peak of labor export in 1983 (380,000).1 The peak was followed by three years of decline, because of the decrease in demand in