PSA: Unemployment rate slightly drops to 6.4% as of Jan. 2022

MANILA, Philippines — The country’s unemployment rate decreased from 6.6 percent in December 2021 to 6.4 percent in January 2022, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) said Friday.

National statistician Dennis Mapa said in his report that the 6.4 percent unemployment rate in January this year translates to 2.93 million unemployed Filipinos, lower than the 3.27 million unemployed in December last year.  

It is also lower than the 3.96 million unemployed Filipinos  recorded in  January 2021.

“The number of persons 15 years old and over reported as either employed or unemployed was estimated at 45.94 million in January 2022. This was higher compared to the 45.21 million Filipinos in the labor force in the same period last year,” said Mapa.

“In terms of the labor force participation rate, this remained the same as the January 2021 rate of 60.5 percent,” he added.

Meanwhile, the employment rate in the country for January 2022 was 93.6 percent, higher than the 93.4 percent in December 2021 and the 91.2 percent in January 2021.

“In terms of magnitude, the number of employed persons increased by 1.77 million from 41.25 million in January 2021 to 43.02 million in January 2022,” Mapa noted.

Mapa also reported that the number of underemployed or employed individuals who want to have additional hours of work in their present job or to have an additional job, or to have a new job with longer hours of work was at 6.40 million, translating to an underemployment rate of 14.9 percent.

He said this was lower than the 16 percent reported in January 2021 but higher than the 14.7 percent reported in December 2021.

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