Unemployment rate drops to 4.36%, a 33-month low

The unemployment rate fell 0.09 percentage points to 4.36 percent last month, with the number of people out of work declining by 8,000 people to 444,000, the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics said in a statement yesterday.

The latest figure is the lowest monthly jobless rate since June 2001, when it was 4.51 percent.

After seasonal adjustments, the jobless rate was 4.57 percent last month, up 0.03 percentage points from March but down 0.59 percentage points from the previous year, the agency said.

Last month's figure of 4.36 percent compared favorably to Germany's unemployment rate of 10.7 percent, France's 9.8 percent, Canada's 7.3 percent, Hong Kong's 7.1 percent, the US' 5.6 percent, Japan's 4.7 percent and Singapore's 4.5 percent, the agency said. South Korea, however, had a jobless rate of 3.4 percent and the UK's was 3 percent.

The workforce grew 17,000 to 9.73 million last month and the labor participation ratio was 57.42 percent, up 0.01 percentage points month-on-month and up 0.21 percentage points year-on-year, as companies expanded and increased hiring to meet surging overseas demand.

As a result, the number of people who lost their jobs because of business closures and job cuts fell to 172,000 last month from 173,000 in March, the agency said.

For the first four months of the year, the agency said the jobless rate was averaged 4.49 percent, down 0.56 percentage points from the same period last year.

Lin Hsin-i (林信義), chief economic adviser to the president, said on Monday that the economy may expand 6 percent this year, the fastest growth in seven years, while the jobless rate is expected to fall below 4.5 percent for the full year this year.

"[Taiwan] has completely bottomed out of a three-year recession," Lin said.