The nation’s unemployment rate dropped to the lowest level in 21 months as robust economic recovery spurred corporate hiring, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
The jobless rate fell to 5.05 percent last month, from 5.17 percent recorded in August, marking the lowest level since January last year. The seasonally adjusted rate fell for the 13th consecutive month to 5.08 percent, compared with 5.11 percent in the previous month.
“As the economy is recovering, demand for manpower continued to grow,” DGBAS Deputy Director Liu Tian-syh (劉天賜) said, adding that payrolls in the industrial and service industries reached the highest level in 20 months.
The number of employees in the industrial and service sectors totaled 6.7 million last month, up 130,000 from August. That represented a gain of 246,000 employees, or 3.81 percent, compared with the same period of last year.
Jennifer Hong (洪雪珍), a top executive at online human resource Web site Yes123.com (Yes123求職網), said that economic recovery has spurred local spending, revitalizing service and retail businesses.
“There were about 173,000 job opportunities in September, up 6,000, or 3 percent, from a month earlier,” she said in a statement.
The number of unemployed dropped 16,000 to 560,000 last month, while the number of people laid off because of business closures fell for the 15th consecutive month to nearly 200,000, down 160,000, or 7.46 percent, from August, DGBAS’ data showed.
Liu said that there were about 115,000 middle-aged people unemployed last month, down 3,000 from August, while the number of long-term unemployed fell to 98,000 people, down 3,000 from the previous month.
Asked whether the jobless rate would drop below 5 percent, a goal set by the government earlier this year, Liu said: “It is possible to achieve the goal, but we don’t know which month that will happen.”
About 63,000 more jobs would need to be created and the number of people out of work would have to be decreased by a further 4,000, he said.
Earlier this week, the central bank said that domestic job conditions remained favorable after the bank raised the key interest rate by 0.125 percentage points last month for the second time this year against the backdrop of robust economic recovery and soaring house prices.
The DGBAS said that the average monthly wages per person in the first eight months rose 6.45 percent year-on-year to NT$45,771, representing the largest growth for that period in 18 years.
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