Local employers’ demand for new workers in the period after the Lunar New Year has rebounded compared with the same period last year thanks to the global economic recovery, which helped improve hiring sentiment in the electronics sector, 104 Job Bank (104人力銀行) said in its latest report.
The online manpower agency’s data showed that job openings — including full-time, part-time and dispatch jobs — totaled 463,000 on the fifth day after the Lunar New Year holiday, an increase of 8.7 percent from a year ago.
The number of job openings after the holiday was also 5.9 percent higher than the pre-holiday level, the report said.
“We retain an optimistic outlook on the job market this year, thanks to expectations of a steady global economic recovery,” 104 Job Bank head of marketing Regis Chen (陳力孑) told the Taipei Times at a press conference on Wednesday last week.
The latest government data show that t unemployment rate in December last year dropped to its lowest level since May last year, reaching 4.08 percent from November’s 4.16 percent. The December figure rounded out last year’s overall jobless rate at 4.18 percent, the lowest level seen since the global financial crisis hit in 2008.
Chen said that the electronics sector had posted 97,000 job openings at 104 Job Bank’s database as of the fifth day after the holiday, topping all other industries and reversing the sluggish hiring sentiment seen in the segment over the past two years.
According to the agency, hiring demand remains strong in the service sector, with the hotel, food and beverage industries reporting 67,000 vacancies, while wholesalers and retailers posted 60,000 openings during the same period.
Meanwhile, 510,000 of 104 Job Bank’s users posted their resumes on the site after the Lunar New Year holiday, with potential jobseekers sending 247,000 applications to the agency on a daily basis, according to the report.
The report also found that more jobseekers have opted to send their resume via mobile devices, with the number of applications sent by cellphone accounting for nearly 30 percent of the total, Chen said.
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