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Job seekers flood market

The unemployment rate rose 0.12 percentage points to 4.22 percent last month due to an increase in the number of first-time job seekers, the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said in a statement yesterday.

However, the jobless rate for last month was down from 4.54 percent a year earlier, the DGBAS said.

The June-to-September period is normally the weakest for jobs as a result of new graduates entering the job market, causing the unemployment rate to rise.

But after seasonal adjustments, the jobless rate stood at 4.20 percent, stable from last month and down 0.34 percent from the previous year, the statistics agency said.

The number of unemployed rose by 13,000 to 437,000 last month, with the eligible workforce at 10.35 million, it added.

In the agency's announcement, last month's figure compared with Germany's 11.3 percent, France's 10.2 percent, Canada's 6.7 percent, Hong Kong's 5.7 percent, the US' 5.0 percent, Japan's 4.4 percent, Singapore's 3.9 percent and South Korea's 3.8 percent.

For the first six months of the year, the average unemployment rate was 4.14 percent, down 0.34 percent from a year earlier, the DGBAS said.

The government is trying to spur economic growth and boost employment to counter a slowdown in exports.

The plans to boost development include helping to arrange NT$200 billion (US$6.3 billion) in loans for small and medium-sized companies as part of efforts to spur economic growth, the government said earlier.
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