Recruitment drives augur well

Massive recruitment programs launched by several high-tech firms lately suggest a solid economic turnaround, but the scramble for engineers may only have a limited effect on reducing the nation's employment rate, economists said yesterday.

Manufacturers of liquid-crystal display panels will hold a number of job fairs over the weekend as demand for their products increases.

AU Optronics Corp (友達光電), the nation's largest flat-panel maker, will hold a recruitment fair at its Hsinchu headquarters this weekend with the aim of recruiting 1,500 engineers this year.

Smaller rival Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp (奇美電子) said its president, Ho Chao-yang (何昭陽), would meet candidates in a hotel in Hsinchu this weekend. The Tainan-based company plans to recruit 1,800 engineers, out of a total of 4,500 people it plans to hire this year, by launching a series of recruitment programs.

"These job fairs along with some healthy data have convinced us that the recovery is actually underway," said Steve Tseng (曾續良), an analyst at Yuanta Core Pacific Securities Co (元大京華證券).

United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電), the world's No.2 contracted chipmaker, is taking the novel approach of posting online a short film featuring the life of UMC's engineers in order to attract professionals.

Taiwan Semiconductor Man-ufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world's biggest made-to-order chipmaker, plans to hire almost 3,000 people this year, according to Tzeng Jinnhaw (曾晉皓), a TSMC spokesman.

"We've been holding a lot of mass recruitment fairs since November last year, and we will continue to hold interviews during the weekends in Hsinchu," Tzeng said.

But the pickup in the information-technology industry is unlikely to spread to other sectors, economists said.

"A turnaround in the capital-intensive industries, such as semiconductors and flat-panel sectors, will only have a limited effect on the nation's employment," said Lin Jin-lung (林金龍), a research fellow at Academia Sinica's Institute of Economics.

The onetime close link between economic growth and employment is weakening, as shown by the so-called "jobless recovery" in the US, Lin said.

Taiwan's jobless rate fell by 0.013 percentage points to 4.58 percent in December from the previous month, according to the Directorate General of Budget Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS). The rate hovered around 5 percent for most of last year.

The agency is set to release January's figures on Monday.

The nation's economy, however, has been growing quickly, expanding 5.17 percent in the past quarter and 3.24 percent for all of last year, the DGBAS said yesterday.

Chou Ji (周濟), a director at the private Chung-hua Institution For Economic Research (CIER, 中經院), said he didn't view the tech recovery as helpful in the labor market.

"The tech recruitment programs seem to be an encouraging sign for the nation's employment situation, but the real impact is yet to be known," Chou said.

Chou said the institute would likely cut its unemployment forecast in its next quarterly report, to be published in April, as a result of the faster-than-expected recovery and increasing job offerings.

In December, CIER predicted that the nation's jobless rate would fall to 4.83 percent this year.