More than 12 million Filipinos were jobless as of May 2021, results of a Social Weather Stations (SWS) poll released on Thursday showed.
The survey, conducted from Apr. 28 to May 2, found adult joblessness at 25.8 percent of the adult labor force.
The number was 1.5 percentage points lower than the 27.3 percent jobless rate in November 2020.
Despite lower unemployment numbers, the SWS noted that the most recent tally was still 8.3 percentage points higher than the pre-pandemic jobless rate of 17.5 percent in December 2019.
Joblessness in the Philippines reached a record-high 45.5 percent in July 2020.
It has since been on a decline, easing to 39.5 percent in September 2020, 27.3 percent in November 2020 and 25.8 percent in May 2021.
The Covid-19 pandemic caused the country to suffer its worst annual average joblessness rate in history in 2020, when the year-long unemployment average was recorded by the SWS at 37.4 percent. John Ezekiel J. Hirro