Malacañang welcomed the result of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) 's January 2022 Labor Force Survey showing the country's unemployment rate decreased from 6.6 percent in December 2021 to 6.4 percent in January this year, saying this was due to the move of the government to ease Covid-19 restrictions.

Communications Secretary Martin Andanar made this statement after the PSA reported a decline of unemployed Filipinos from 3.96 million in January 2021 to 2.93 million in January 2022.

This means a decrease of 1.04 unemployed persons in the country.

In his statement, Andanar said the decline was due to the "recalibration of strategies" in handling the pandemic.

"We attribute the improvement in the employment situation to the effective recalibration of our strategies with the shift to Alert Level System," he said Friday, March 18.

"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 added.

Despite this, Andanar said the government would continue to provide subsidies to cushion the effects of inflation and the successive oil price hikes.

"The government, meanwhile, continues to provide targeted relief for the transport and agriculture sectors and unconditional cash transfers for the bottom 50 percent of households amid inflationary pressures," he said.

On Wednesday, Malacañang confirmed that President Duterte has approved to provide P200 per month for a year to the bottom 50 percent of the population while retaining the excise tax imposed on fuel products amid the rising oil prices.

On Thursday, Andanar said that only beneficiaries of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) would receive the subsidy.