Start here: the six topics that carry the exam
Ranked by how often they have actually appeared in the released questionnaires, not by how much space reviewers give them. If your revision time is short, spend it here first.
LaborCode.ph is not a review centre and this page is not a substitute for one. It is a free study resource, maintained by the team that writes the rest of this site.
The exam at a glance
| Subject | Labor Law and Social Legislation |
| Weight | 10% of the general average |
| Format | 20 essay questions, 5% each. No multiple choice. |
| Passing mark | 75% general average across all subjects |
| Coverage | Laws, rules, issuances and jurisprudence up to a cut-off date fixed for each examination |
Since 2023 the paper has settled into a stable shape: twenty single-issue essays, no sub-questions, no multiple choice. Candidates are told to open each answer with a yes or a no where the question calls for one, and then to explain. The 2026 examination sat Labor Law on 9 September 2026, with coverage frozen at 30 June 2025.
The one number worth internalising is the weight. At 10%, Labor Law carries the same share as Criminal Law and less than half the share of Remedial Law. It rewards accuracy and speed, not depth for its own sake.
What actually gets asked
Most reviewers give every part of the syllabus roughly equal space. The examinations do not. We read the questionnaires the Supreme Court has released and classified each question against the eight parts of the syllabus. Across the three papers sat under the current twenty-essay format — 2022, 2023 and 2024, or 54 questions in total — the distribution looks like this.
Three parts — termination, labor relations and labor standards — account for roughly two-thirds of the paper. Basic Principles did not carry a question of its own in any of those three years; it surfaces inside other questions as an interpretive overlay rather than as a subject in its own right.
The distribution was different before the format changed. In 2017, 2018 and 2019, when each numbered question carried several separately graded sub-parts, jurisdiction and procedure were far more prominent — the 2019 paper alone devoted a five-part question to prescriptive periods. Under the current single-issue format, procedure tends to appear folded into a substantive problem rather than as a standalone item. Reviewers weighted to the pre-2022 papers therefore overstate how much pure remedial labor law you need.
Doctrines that keep coming back
Across the released questionnaires, a short list of doctrines recurs year after year.
- Constructive dismissal, and telling it apart from a genuine resignation
- Procedural due process and what it costs an employer to get it wrong
- The reliefs: reinstatement, backwages, and separation pay in lieu of reinstatement
- Certification elections — timing, the bars, and who the bargaining agent is
- Union membership eligibility: supervisory, confidential and rank-and-file employees, and commingling
- Unfair labor practice — and the point candidates most often miss, that it requires a nexus to the right to self-organisation
- The legality of a strike, and the consequences of an illegal one
- Labor-only contracting and the principal’s solidary liability
- Regularisation — probationary, project and fixed-term arrangements that ripen into regular employment
- Seafarers’ disability claims — the third-doctor referral and the post-employment medical examination. Tested in 2022, 2023 and 2024.
- Wage distortion, and the limits of a regional wage order
- Kasambahay coverage and benefits
The syllabus, part by part
The eight parts below follow the Supreme Court’s syllabus. Each links into the full explanations on this site.
I. Basic principles and concepts
The legal bases of labor law — international instruments, the 1987 Constitution, the Civil Code and the Labor Code — and the state policies that run through everything else: full protection to labor, security of tenure, social justice, equal work opportunities, and the rule that doubts are resolved in favour of labor.
II. Recruitment and placement
Local and overseas employment, the regulatory authorities, prohibited practices, and illegal recruitment in its simple, large-scale and syndicated forms. A small part of the syllabus that produced two questions in each of 2023 and 2024 — including illegal recruitment paired with trafficking.
III. Employment relationship
The four-fold test and the economic dependence test, burden of proof, contracting and labor-only contracting, and the six kinds of employment: regular, casual, project, fixed term, seasonal and probationary.
IV. Labor standards
Hours of work, overtime, rest periods and flexible work arrangements; wages and their payment; leaves under the Code and under special laws; telecommuting; special workers and special groups — apprentices and learners, women, minors, night workers and kasambahay; sexual harassment; and management prerogative with its limits.
V. Labor relations
Self-organisation and who may exercise it, the bargaining unit and the bargaining representative, union registration and internal union affairs, collective bargaining, unfair labor practice by employers and by unions, and concerted activities — strikes, pickets, lockouts and assumption of jurisdiction. The second most heavily tested part of the syllabus, and the part where this site’s own coverage is thinnest. We are writing it out now.
VI. Suspension and termination of employment
Just causes and authorized causes, due process, preventive suspension, constructive dismissal, termination by the employee — resignation and abandonment — illegal dismissal and its reliefs, and retirement. The single heaviest part of the exam.
VII. Social legislation
Social security and government service insurance — coverage, exclusions, dependents, beneficiaries and benefits — the limited portability scheme, and disability and death benefits including seafarers’ claims. Thin in volume but constant, and since 2024 the examiners have drawn on the newer welfare statutes rather than only SSS and GSIS.
VIII. Labor adjudication: jurisdiction and remedies
The NLRC, DOLE, the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court; procedural standards; the single-entry approach; procedure in the NLRC; and certiorari against rulings of the Secretary of Labor and the Commission.
Statutes the examiners have actually used
Recent papers have turned repeatedly on special legislation rather than on the Labor Code alone. Each of the following produced at least one question in the examinations from 2022 onward.
- RA 11210, the 105-Day Expanded Maternity Leave Law — maternity leave, coverage and availment
- RA 10361, the Domestic Workers Act — kasambahay coverage and benefits
- RA 11861, the Expanded Solo Parents Welfare Act — leave benefits under special laws
- RA 7877 and RA 11313 — sexual harassment in the work environment
- RA 8042 as amended, the Migrant Workers Act — overseas workers, agency liability and money claims
- RA 11199, the Social Security Act of 2018 — SSS coverage, contributions and benefits
- RA 9208 as amended by RA 10364 — trafficking in persons, tested alongside illegal recruitment
Squarely within the syllabus but not the subject of a question in 2022, 2023 or 2024, which is simply where the untested surface area sits rather than a prediction:
- RA 11165, the Telecommuting Act — remote work and fair treatment
- RA 11058 and DO 198-18 — occupational safety and health standards
- RA 10151, the Night Workers law — night work and the differential
- RA 12063, the Enterprise-Based Education and Training Framework Act — apprentices and learners
- RA 11641, creating the Department of Migrant Workers
- RA 11036, the Mental Health Act, as it applies in the workplace
- RA 10911 on age discrimination, and RA 7277 on the employment of persons with disabilities
Why a printed reviewer goes stale
Labor law moves, and reviewers do not. The clearest recent example is apprenticeship and learnership. Republic Act No. 12063, the Enterprise-Based Education and Training Framework Act, reworked that regime in 2024 and repealed provisions that a great many circulating reviewers — and even some reprints of the Labor Code — still carry as live law. Any reviewer printed before 2024 is wrong on that point, and quietly so.
Two habits follow. First, check the cut-off date of your examination and ask whether each source you are reading predates it. Second, read the codal text from a primary source rather than from a reviewer’s paraphrase. We maintain the articles on this site against the current text and flag amendments as they take effect.
Frequently asked questions
How much of the bar is Labor Law?
Ten per cent of the general average. It is examined as its own paper, in twenty essay questions worth five per cent each.
Are there multiple-choice questions in Labor Law?
No. The Labor Law papers released for 2022, 2023 and 2024 were entirely essay. Since 2023 they have been twenty single-part essays with no sub-questions.
Which topics should I prioritise?
On the released questionnaires for 2022 to 2024, termination of employment, labor relations and labor standards together accounted for about two-thirds of the questions. Basic principles carried no question of its own in those three years.
What is the coverage cut-off?
The Supreme Court fixes one for each examination and states it in the year’s first Bar Bulletin. For the 2026 examination it was 30 June 2025. Nothing enacted or decided after the cut-off is examinable.
Where can I read the past questions myself?
The Supreme Court publishes each subject’s questionnaire on its own website after the examination, usually within weeks. The papers from 2022 onward are on the Court’s site; earlier papers are in the LawPhil repository. Both are linked in the sources below.
Sources
Every factual claim on this page traces to one of the following. We cite the Supreme Court and the primary statutory text directly, never another commentator’s summary.
This page is a study aid, not legal advice, and it is not affiliated with the Supreme Court or with any review centre. Last reviewed 9 September 2026.