■ Profit-taking depresses shares
Share prices closed 0.33 percent lower yesterday as an initial Wall Street-driven advance lost momentum in the face of profit-taking and weakness in financial stocks, dealers said. They said the financial sector lost ground following a report that lawmakers have agreed to a ceiling on interest rates for debt taken on by holders of credit and cash cards.
The TAIEX dropped 21 points to end at 6,329.52, on turnover of NT$112.33 billion (US$3.36 billion). The New Taiwan dollar declined against its US counterpart on the Taipei foreign exchange market, down NT$0.024 to end the day at NT$33.485. Turnover was US$861 million.
■ DGBAS releases job figures
A total of 841,000 job openings were available at government-run employment agencies in the first 10 months of the year, the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) announced on Tuesday. With the number of job seekers totaling 487,000 during that period, this translates into 1.7 jobs per person. The DGBAS report shows that the number of employers and job seekers registering with government-run employment agencies increased by 7.5 percent and 9.5 percent, respectively, compared with the same period of last year. However, the jobs available to each job seeker was lower than the 1.8 during the year-earlier period.
Most of the openings -- 374,000 -- were for workers with a senior-high school diploma. A total of 403,177 job seekers were hired from January to October, up 78.6 percent from the same period of last year, according to the bureau's statistics.
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