Philippines: Remittances moderate in May: Key drag comes from US, not Middle East; expect seasonal tailwinds in 2H26

Research evidence excerpt

Philippines: Remittances moderate in May: Key drag comes from US, not Middle East; expect seasonal tailwinds in 2H26

J P M O R G A N Asia Pacific Economic Research

16 July 2026

Philippines: Remittances

moderate in May

Key drag comes from US, not Middle East; expect

seasonal tailwinds in 2H26

Emerging Markets Asia, Economic

and Policy Research

Jin Tik Ngai

(65) 6807 5556

jintik.ngai@jpmorgan.com

JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., Singapore Branch

Overseas workers' cash remittances came in at US$2.71 billion in May (April: US

$2.72 billion). On an annualized basis, remittances grew 2.0%oya, marking one of the

slowest expansions since the post-pandemic reopening and missing consensus

expectations (2.1%oya).

Don’t blame the Middle East – Compositional details show that the key source of

weakness is from the US. In May, cash remittances from the Americas (predominantly

from the US) rose only 0.6%oya, underperforming other major destination markets

(Middle East: 3.3%oya; Europe: 2.9%oya; Asia ex-Middle East: 2.6%oya). This has

been the case since the onset of the Middle East conflict as well (Figure 1).

Remittances from stateside are the real issue – There has been an unambiguous

downtrend in remittance flows during the post-pandemic years. Since 2022, the

remittances share of GDP has fallen by almost 1%pt. (Figure 2), with over 50% of the

decline attributed to the Americas and the rest of the decline distributed equally among

the other major regions (Figure 3). In our view, this reflects the aging demographics

and the declining skilled worker/high-income share of the overseas Filipino worker

(OFW) population (Figure 4), including in the US. There are also other plausible

explanations, namely lingering cost-of-living issues that drag down real disposable