SEnA facilitated ₱2.9 billion for 58,212 workers in 2024. Its own caseload totals do not reconcile.

The headline numbers

All 2024 figures come from the DOLE and NCMB year-end release on the Single Entry Approach. The average per worker is our calculation from the two figures beside it; every other tile is published.

Finding 1 — ₱2.9 billion facilitated through a free 30-day conciliation step

SEnA is the Department of Labor and Employment's mandatory 30-day conciliation-mediation stage for labour issues arising from employer-employee relations, subject to the exceptions in Department Order No. 249, series of 2025. A request for assistance is filed at a DOLE regional office or an NCMB branch, or online, and a conciliator-mediator brings both sides in.

Finding 2 — the release contains four caseload totals and reconciles none of them

The headline rates are high: a 99.63% disposition rate and a 90.35% settlement rate. Neither is published with the base it was calculated on, and the release's own counts point at four different bases for the same year. This is the reason no rate on this page is converted into a number of cases.

Finding 3 — most requests are against micro and small employers

Of the 64,376 requests for which respondent employment size was validated, 63.12% were against micro or small enterprises. These are counts of requests by respondent establishment size, not counts of distinct companies: the release labels the total as companies and then reports RFAs within each band.

The full dataset

The underlying observations and principal derived measures behind this page, one per row, each with its period, its geography, how the source states its value, whether it is published or our own arithmetic, and the source it came from. The CSV carries the same rows with raw numeric values, ranges, the derivation inputs and the source URL in their own columns.

exact

An exact figure as published.

rounded

Published already rounded by the source.

lower-bound

Published as a floor ("more than", "over"), not a count.

approximate

Published as an approximation ("almost", "about").

range

Published as a range rather than a single value.

not-published

The source publishes no value for this measure.

What we could not establish

Nothing on this page is an estimate. Where a figure could not be sourced or could not be computed from aligned published data, it is suppressed and the reason is published here rather than filled in. Each item is on the list for the next update.

1. The 2025 SEnA figures. No year-end release covering 2025 had been posted on ncmb.gov.ph or dole.gov.ph when this page was compiled, so this page is 2024 data throughout and is labelled as such.
2. The NCMB's definitions of "processed" (53,519) and "handled" (83,836), and the base behind the 99.63% disposition rate and the 90.35% settlement rate. Without them the rates cannot be converted into case counts.
3. Why the 53,753 requests settled within 30 days exceeds the 53,519 said to have been processed in the same year.
4. The date discrepancy between the NCMB copy of the release (21 January 2025) and the DOLE copy (31 January 2025), which carry the same figures.
5. Whether the 64,376 records with validated employment-size data represent distinct employers or repeated respondents, which determines whether the size shares describe employers or disputes.
6. NLRC case load and disposition figures, which would show what happens to the requests that do not settle. Not yet added, and no comparison between SEnA and NLRC timescales is made on this page without them.
7. The full text of Department Order No. 249, series of 2025, including the list of issues excepted from mandatory conciliation-mediation. dole.gov.ph returned HTTP 403 on the access date, so this page cites the order's scope provision and links the ONAR registry rather than reproducing the exceptions.

Method

Corrections

Every change to a published figure is recorded here with its date. Nothing is edited away silently.

1. 4 September 2026

   First published with the source dated 21 January 2025, with establishment-size counts we had calculated from the published percentages, with a headline and standfirst claiming the money moved "without a lawyer and without a court" and that "every Philippine labour complaint" passes through SEnA, and with an unsourced comparison to NLRC timescales. The release is dated 31 January 2025 by DOLE; the establishment-size counts are published in the release itself and our calculated versions were wrong by up to two records; the "without a lawyer" and "every complaint" claims are not supported by any source and have been removed; and the NLRC comparison has been removed. The page also implied that the 90.35% settlement rate applied to the 53,519 processed requests. It does not: the release contains four different caseload totals, and that discrepancy is now the page's second finding rather than a footnote.

2. 4 September 2026 (second pass)

   Second correction pass. The published "five to nine (5-9) days" resolution time is now carried as a range with value_min 5 and value_max 9 and a basis of published, rather than as a missing value. The revised-guidelines source is corrected to Department Order No. 249, series of 2025, signed 7 February 2025, linked to the Office of the National Administrative Register registry. The programme description now states that mandatory conciliation-mediation is subject to the exceptions set out in that order; the exceptions themselves are not reproduced, because the order could not be read in full, and the page states plainly that it is not legal advice. The NCMB programme page, which carries no publication date, is now cited by access date rather than having the access date used as a publication date. Every observation gained a value_qualifier, and the claim that nothing is estimated is replaced with a statement that no missing values are imputed and that approximations, ranges and lower bounds are explicitly labeled.

Sources

Each source is labelled with what it actually is. A news report is never a primary source here — it is the carrier of a figure an agency stated, and it is marked as one.

1. Primary document

   National Conciliation and Mediation Board, DOLE's ₱2 billion boost for workers in 2024 under SEnA program · 2025-01-21

   The NCMB copy of the same release, carrying identical figures. This is the text that was actually retrievable on the access date. NCMB shows it under a posting date ten days earlier than the DOLE release of record.

2. Primary document

   Department of Labor and Employment, PHP2B monetary benefits for workers in 2024 under DOLE's SEnA Program · 2025-01-31

   The release of record, dated 31 January 2025 by DOLE, and the source of every 2024 figure on this page. dole.gov.ph returned HTTP 403 to automated retrieval on the access date, so the identical text was read from the NCMB copy listed below, which NCMB shows under a posting date of 21 January 2025. The date discrepancy between the two agency copies is unresolved and is listed in what we could not establish.

3. Primary document

   National Conciliation and Mediation Board, Single Entry Approach (SEnA) — programme description · accessed 2026-09-04

   The description of what SEnA is, who may file a request for assistance, and the statutory basis in Republic Act No. 10396. The page carries no publication date, so it is cited by access date only.

4. Primary document

   Department of Labor and Employment, Department Order No. 249, series of 2025 — Revised Implementing Rules and Regulations of the Single Entry Approach · 2025-02-07

   Signed by Secretary Bienvenido E. Laguesma on 7 February 2025, revising Department Order No. 151, series of 2016, and published on 15 February 2025. Filed with the Office of the National Administrative Register, whose registry at the UP Law Center is linked here; dole.gov.ph returned HTTP 403 to automated retrieval on the access date, so the order was not read in full and only its scope provision is cited.

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