About 46 percent of employers in Taiwan said they planned to increase hiring in the second quarter, with those in the manufacturing sector showing the strongest staffing demand, a report released yesterday by Manpower Inc showed.
Of the 1,086 employers polled this month, only 1 percent said they planned to trim their headcount in the coming quarter, 1 percent said they had no clear thoughts yet and 52 percent expected to maintain their current payrolls, the Milwaukee-based employment services provider said in the quarterly report.
The latest Manpower Employment Outlook Survey indicated that next quarter would offer the most promising hiring environment in Taiwan since the second quarter of 2005, when the poll began.
“Labor market demand in Taiwan has grown steadily since the last quarter of 2009 and exceeded expectations,” Terence Liu (劉玿廷), general manager of Manpower Services (Taiwan) Co, said in an e-mailed statement.
The nation’s unemployment rate dropped to a two-year low of 4.64 percent in January, from 4.67 percent in December, the government’s statistics bureau reported on Feb. 24.
Of the six major industry sectors polled, the Manpower survey found local employers in the manufacturing sector the most optimistic, with a net employment outlook figure of 48 percent. The net employment outlook figure was -calculated by subtracting the number of employers planning to reduce staffing levels from the number planning to hire workers.
That was followed by the mining and construction sectors (47 percent) and the finance, insurance and real-estate sectors (44 percent).
In contrast, employers in the transportation and utilities sectors have the weakest staffing demand (32 percent).
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