Short answer. Yes. Article 13 of the Labor Code defines worker as any member of the labor force, whether employed or unemployed — so the definition expressly includes unemployed job seekers, not only people who currently hold a job, at least for purposes of the article's own recruitment-and-placement definitions.
What the law says
"Worker" means any member of the labor force, whether employed or unemployed.
Labor Code, Article 13 — Key Recruitment Terms Defined. Read the full provision →
The definition expressly includes the unemployed
Article 13 defines worker to mean any member of the labor force, whether employed or unemployed. The phrase whether employed or unemployed is not incidental — it directly settles that someone actively part of the labor force but currently without a job still falls within this definition of worker, at least as the term is used in this article. Labor force is the operative filter: the definition does not sweep in everyone without a job, but those who are part of the labor force — people in the market for work — whether they currently hold employment or not.
Why this definition sits inside a recruitment-and-placement article
Article 13 is titled around key recruitment terms, and most of its other definitions — recruitment and placement, private fee-charging employment agency, private recruitment entity, license, and authority — describe the mechanics of matching workers with jobs. Defining worker broadly enough to include the unemployed makes sense in that context: recruitment and placement activities are, by their nature, often aimed at people who do not yet have the job being offered.
The other definitions in the same article, for context
The same article also defines seaman as any person employed in a vessel engaged in maritime navigation, overseas employment as employment of a worker outside the Philippines, and emigrant as any person, worker or otherwise, who emigrates to a foreign country under an immigrant visa, resident permit, or its equivalent. These terms build on the broad worker definition, applying it across the different overseas-employment and recruitment concepts the article defines.
What this definition does not resolve
Article 13 settles that worker includes the unemployed for purposes of this article's own definitions, but it does not itself address whether every other provision of the Labor Code that uses the word worker necessarily carries this same broad meaning, since other articles may use the term in their own specific context. Whether a particular Labor Code provision reaches unemployed job seekers can depend on that provision's own wording and purpose. Within this article, though, the consequence is concrete: protections built on the recruitment-and-placement definitions do not switch off merely because the person recruited was unemployed when the job was promised.