The number of job opportunities on the market has dropped significantly this year, reflecting the nation's lukewarm economy affected by industrial migration and low personal consumption, an employment consultant said yesterday.
"The high-tech and service industries, two of the hottest sectors, did not offer as many job opportunities as they did in the past few years," Kevin Zang (臧聲遠), chief editor of the Chinese-language monthly Career Consulting, said by telephone.
Career Consulting held a job fair at the Taipei World Trade Center over the weekend, attracting more than 88,000 college graduates and job seekers scrambling for 12,000 positions offered by 80 enterprises, including panel maker AU Optronics Corp (友達光電), notebook computer manufacturer Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶電
Industry migration to overseas markets, mainly to China, a lack of expansion in the local market and a slew of merger and acquisition activities have resulted in a hiring slump in the high-tech industry, especially in the semiconductor and panel maker sectors, Zang said.
Service industries, hard hit by the credit abuse storm last year and rising consumer prices, is expanding cautiously and offering limited job opportunities, Zang said.
As next year's presidential election looms, the outcome of which could affect cross-strait relations, many companies have adopted a wait-and-see approach to personnel expansion, he said.
Jobs in traditional industries, however, are increasing, he said. Riding the property market boom, hirings by real estate agencies and construction firms have risen this year with the strongest demand for real estate agents with postings in China and property managers, Zang said.
Many of the college graduates who visited the two-day fair found it difficult to find a desirable position, Zang said. Of approximately 300,000 college graduates entering the job market this year, only 35 percent of them landed a job between March and the middle of last month, he said, citing company statistics.
The figure is even lower, at 26 percent, a survey released by the Web-based 104 Job Bank (104人力銀行) said last month.
That gloomy outlook and sentiment, however, is not in accord with government statistics.
The average jobless rate for the first five months of the year was 3.84 percent, the same level as last year and the lowest since 2002, a statement released by the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics said last month.
The figure may be a result of a large number of people having moved to China in recent years, Zang said.
College graduates who failed to land a job and decided then to pursue higher education or train for an administration position in the government were not included in the jobless data, he said.
The government statistics also fail to reflect the change in the nation's employment structure, as the number of part-time employees has surged from 70,000 last year to 180,000 this year, Zang said.
The average starting salary offered to college graduates is approximately NT$26,000 (US$794) per month, which rises to between NT$30,000 and NT$36,000 a month for job seekers with a master's degree or above, Zang said.
The nominal wage level has remained at the same level for the past eight years, but due to inflation, real wages are shrinking, he said.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by