Taiwan’s unemployment climbed to nearly 5.2 percent last month, rising for the second consecutive month as an increase of graduates crowded the job market, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
The latest jobless rate was 0.04 percentage points higher than the June level, meaning an extra 8,000 people could not find employment. However, the seasonal adjusted figure stood at 5.17 percent, falling for the sixth straight month, indicating gradual, but slow improvement for the job market.
“The jobless rate edged a little higher [last month] as more graduates and part-timers entered the market, encouraged by the improving economy,” said Liu Tian-shy (劉天賜), a deputy director at DGBAS census bureau.
Starting in June, some 140,000 graduates were expected to join the job force, Liu said.
Last month, 578,000 people were unemployed, increasing by 8,000 from a month earlier, the statement said. The number of first-time seekers increased by 15,000, while 14,000 people lost their jobs to business closures or downsizing, the directorate said.
The number of people who lost jobs to seasonal or temporary hiring stood at 1,000 last month, while 6,000 people quit of their own accords.
People with college and higher education topped other groups sorted by education level, as 5.74 percent of them could not land a job last month, trailed by their peers who only have a high school education at 5.55 percent, the statement said.
Meanwhile, people aged between 25 and 44 had the hardest time finding jobs, as 337,000 of them were unemployed, government statistics showed.
However, the directorate expressed optimism about the enlarging job pool. Last month, 10.53 million people were employed with 55,000 more jobs available than a month earlier, showing signs of growth momentum, the statement said.
The increase came mainly from the service and manufacturing sectors, which hired 44,000 and 13,000 more workers last month respectively, the directorate said.
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