The level of joblessness last month climbed for the fourth straight month to 4.4 percent, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday, adding that the nation’s unemployment rate might improve this month based on historical experience.
The rate of unemployment — an indicator of slowing economic performance — last month marked its highest level since August last year and was up from 4.31 percent in July, the agency said in its monthly report.
The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate, a more reliable indicator of the long-term trend, was up 0.04 percentage points from the previous month to 4.29 percent last month, the report said.
“The seasonal effect continued to be the main factor that pushed up the jobless rate last month,” DGBAS deputy director Chen Min (陳憫) told a press conference.
A majority of the college graduates entering the labor market have done so in the past few months, but some have not received job offers yet, which is why unemployment has continued to climb, Chen said.
The slowing economic sentiment was another factor that helped drag down the labor market as a conservative attitude among employers made them less likely to recruit personnel, including first-time jobseekers, Chen added.
The latest data showed that 502,000 people were unemployed last month, an increase of 12,000 from the previous month, with the number of first-time jobseekers failing to find employment rising by 8,000.
The increase was also reflected in growing youth unemployment, with joblessness among 15-to-24-year-olds rising 0.65 percentage points from July to 13.61 percent last month, its highest level this year, the report showed.
However, Chen said the historical trend in the rate of unemployment showed that the figure usually rose to its highest annual level in August and further improved in the following months.
This would indicate that this month’s jobless rate remains an important indicator to evaluate the current national labor market situation, Chen added.
Tony Phoo (符銘財), a Taipei-based economist at Standard Chartered Bank, said that he expected the unemployment rate to show an improvement from this month, as exports return to a modest level of growth in the fourth quarter.
“Regardless of the impact of the seasonal effect, the employment situation has not improved over the past three months,” Phoo said in a telephone interview.
Phoo expected the unemployment rate could drop to between 4.2 percent and 4.3 percent by the end of this year, with job openings offered by the service sector and the financial industry leading the trend.
The DGBAS also released the latest salary data yesterday, which showed that national monthly salaries averaged NT$37,435 (US$1,270) in July, up 1.63 percent from a year ago.
However, when bonuses and other forms of compensation are included, the average monthly remuneration package showed a 0.44 percent markdown from a year earlier and stood at NT$42,535 in July, the data showed.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained