The unemployment rate rose to 4.24 percent last month as the number of jobseekers increased, ending three months of decline, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
That was an increase from January’s 4.16 percent.
On an annual basis, the unemployment rate dropped 0.01 percentage points last month, the DGBAS said in its monthly report.
However, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate — a more accurate indicator of the long-term trend — fell for the fourth consecutive month to 4.16 percent last month, from 4.2 percent in January, an indication that the labor market is on a steady track, the DGBAS said.
“Basically, the labor market did not show the deterioration that we were worried about before the Lunar New Year, while signifying steadiness,” DGBAS deputy director Chen Min (陳憫) told a press conference.
Chen said the month-on-month rise in the jobless rate last month was led mainly- by seasonal factors, as more workers choose to change jobs around the Lunar New Year holiday, further driving up the unemployment rate during the interim period.
That various part-time jobs ended after the Lunar New Year holiday was the other factor behind the increase in the jobless rate last month, Chen added.
The number of unemployed increased by 8,000 to 483,000 last month from a month earlier, with the number of people quitting their jobs due to dissatisfaction, and people losing positions as a result of business downsizing and factories closing up by 4,000 and 3,000 respectively, the report said.
RECRUITMENT PLANS
Because various employers in Taiwan have been launching recruitment plans after the Lunar New Year, Chen said the trend may become clearer this month, following more jobseekers receiving new offers.
Henry Ho (何啟聖), a public relations director at 1111 Job Bank (1111人力銀行), said the job market is in a “U-shaped rebound,” in line with recovering sentiment in the global economy.
The online manpower agency’s latest survey showed nearly 70 percent of polled employers will recruit new employees in the second quarter, up from 62 percent in the first quarter.
The results indicated that the nation’s jobless rate this month may remain flat or rise slightly from a month earlier, but it is predicted to further improve next month and in May, Ho said.
The DGBAS yesterday also released employee’s average wages for January, which increased 1.48 percent to NT$37,683 from a year ago.
On a monthly basis, the average wage edged up 0.49 percent.
However, average wages, including bonuses and compensation, dropped 27.58 percent to NT$60,702 in January from a year earlier, as more employers distributed annual bonuses in January last year, further raising the comparison basis, the DGBAS said.
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