Drop in unemployment rate is due to new strategy vs pandemic, says Palace

FILE PHOTO: PCOO Secretary Martin Andanar. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO / JOAN BONDOC

MANILA, Philippines — Malacañang on Friday attributed the decrease in the number of unemployed Filipinos to the “effective recalibration” of the government’s strategies in addressing the COVID-19 pandemic and the shift to the alert level system.

In a statement, Presidential Communications Secretary and acting presidential spokesperson Martin Andanar said the Palace welcomes the results of the Philippine Statistics Authority’s Labor Force Survey, which showed that 2.93 million Filipinos are unemployed as of January 2022, lower than the 3.96 million in January 2021.

“We attribute the improvement in the employment situation to the effective recalibration of our strategies with the shift to Alert Level System, and with more parts of the country being classified to Alert Level 1, our Economic Team estimates 170,000 less unemployed workers over the next quarter,” he said.

“Government, meanwhile, continues to provide targeted relief for the transport and agriculture sectors and unconditional cash transfers for the bottom 50% of households amid inflationary pressures,” said Andanar.

In September 2021, the national government approved the alert level system in classifying the set of restrictions in an area, in lieu of the previous community quarantine levels.

In his report on Friday, national statistician Dennis Mapa said that the 6.4 percent unemployment rate in January 2022 representing 2.93 million Filipinos was also lower than the 6.6 percent unemployment rate in December 2021, which represents 3.27 million unemployed Filipinos.

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, according to Mapa.

JPV