■ 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.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last