OFW

Overseas Filipino worker. In official use it is a survey category with a definition and a count, not a figure of speech: the Philippine Statistics Authority runs an annual Survey on Overseas Filipinos, and the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas publishes the money that comes back as two distinct series, personal remittances and the narrower cash remittances.

The two series are the trap. They are different measures and they must never be added together or used interchangeably in the same sentence. Beyond the accounting, the category carries a double reading this course does not resolve: it is the strongest available evidence against the story that Filipinos do not work, and it is a record of a country that could not employ its own people at a living wage.

Source: Philippine Statistics Authority, 2024 Survey on Overseas Filipinos, https://psa.gov.ph/content/results-2024-overseas-filipino-workers-number-overseas-filipino-workers-grew , counting 2.19 million OFWs remitting ₱262.20 billion during the survey period. Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas remittance statistics, giving personal remittances of US$39.62 billion in 2025, equal to 7.3 percent of GDP, and cash remittances of US$35.63 billion. Pull both directly from the agencies rather than from press coverage.

First used in: 2.6 · What is actually strong here