File photo MANILA - The government aims to bring down the unemployment rate close to pre-pandemic level of around 5 to 5.5 percent this year, Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) Secretary Ramon Lopez said Tuesday. In a virtual presser of the Presidential Communications Operations Office-Office of the Global Media and Public Affairs, Lopez said the unemployment rate slowed down to 6.5 percent last November from a peak of 17.6 percent in April 2020. "Our goal in 2022 is to further increase our job generation efforts to close down (the) unemployment rate nearer to pre-pandemic levels," he said. Last year, the Task Force Group on Economic Recovery-National Employment Recovery Strategy (TGER-NERS) was created to address job shedding across different industries due to adverse impact of coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19). From January to November 2021, the TGER-NERS contributed some 913,498 in job generation. Some 162,861 jobs were created through Department of Labor and Employm