Demand from the service sector will help fuel optimism for the labor market in Taiwan in the coming quarter as employers in the thriving tourism sector still struggle to find the right talent, a survey released by ManpowerGroup said yesterday.
The Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based employment agency’s survey showed that 44 percent of the 1,063 Taiwanese employers polled anticipated increasing their workforce, with only 4 percent predicting a decrease.
Meanwhile, half of all Taiwanese employers polled in the survey said that they would leave their current workforce intact, the US employment agency said.
“The employer optimism indicated the Taiwanese labor market will be one of the most prosperous in the region in the quarter ahead,” ManpowerGroup said in an e-mailed statement.
Based on the agency’s “net employment outlook” gauge — calculated by subtracting the number of employers planning to reduce staff from the number planning to hire — Taiwan’s labor market is expected to continue to improve steadily from the first and second quarter to 37 percent in the third quarter, up 4 percentage points quarter-on-quarter and relatively stable year-on-year.
Employers in all six industry sectors report positive hiring intentions, the survey showed. Bosses in the service sector reporting the strongest hiring intentions, with more than half of employers in the sector polled saying they plan to add to their workforce during the third quarter.
The sector’s outlook gauge stood at 48 percent, up 12 and 17 percentage points from a quarter and a year earlier respectively, marking the strongest outlook for the sector since the survey started in the second quarter of 2005, according to the statement.
ManpowerGroup Taiwan country manager Terence Liu (劉玿廷) attributed the strong hiring forecast in the service sector to demand for workers with professions in the tourism industry, driven by the steep increase in free independent travelers from China.
“Despite ongoing turmoil in the global marketplace, declining export demand and reduced private consumption, the opportunities for Taiwan’s jobseekers are still expected to be bright in the next three months,” Liu said.
Other than the service sector, the hiring pace is also expected to be robust in the finance, insurance and real-estate sectors, as well as in the manufacturing, mining and construction industries, the statement said.
However, employers in the transportation and utilities sectors — which had reported the most positive hiring intentions in the second quarter — reported the least optimistic hiring outlooks for the quarter ahead, the survey said.
A similar poll released by the Council of Labor Affairs last week showed that 20.83 percent of 3,014 Taiwanese employers polled between April 23 and May 10 planned to increase recruitment in the upcoming quarter. However, the survey also showed job opportunities would drop to 49,100 in the third quarter from about 100,000 in the same quarter of last year.
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