The unemployment rate rose 0.08 percentage points to 4.61 percent last month, with the number of people out of work rising 8,000 people to 468,000, the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting & Statistics (DGBAS) said in a statement yesterday.
After seasonal adjustments, the jobless rate was 4.64 percent last month, down from 4.71 percent in January, the DGBAS said.
The February figure was compared to Germany's 11.1 percent, France's 9.6 percent, Canada's 7.4 percent, Hong Kong's 7.2 percent, the US' 5.6 percent, Japan's 5.0 percent, Singapore's 4.5 percent and South Korea's 3.3 percent in the agency's announcement.
The number of people who lost their jobs because of business closures and job cuts fell to 183,000 last month from 186,000 in January, the DGBAS said.
Taiwan's unemployment rate has fallen from a high of 5.35 percent in August 2002 to 4.53 percent in January, a 30-month low, as companies such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (
The global investment bank Lehman Brothers, which kept its GDP growth target for Taiwan at 6 percent this year, said yesterday in a report that the strong economic recovery was increasing the nation's demand for labor.
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