The unemployment rate last month declined 0.04 percentage points to 3.87 percent from November last year, but gained 0.08 percentage points from a year earlier, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) reported yesterday.
For last year as a whole, the unemployment rate dropped 0.18 percentage points to 3.78 percent, the lowest in 15 years, the DGBAS said.
“The impact of the current economic downturn on the job market has remained constant,” DGBAS deputy section head Chang Yun-yun (張雲澐) said, adding that the number of workers who have lost seasonal or temporary jobs declined last month, ending a trend of monthly increases.
Last year, unemployed people totaled 440,000, 17,000 less than in 2014, DGBAS data showed.
The jobless rate for the 15 to 24 age group was 12.05 percent last year, 3.95 percent for the 25 to 44 age bracket and 1.99 percent for people aged between 45 and 64 years, the data showed.
Among the unemployed, 4.79 percent have university degrees or higher education credentials, the data showed.
Due mostly to slumping exports and a slowing manufacturing sector, companies have begun to favor graduates of management or law programs, shifting away from science and technology graduates, 1111 Job Bank (1111人力銀行) vice president Daniel Lee (李大華) said.
Meanwhile, the average take-home pay for workers in the first 11 months of last year rose to an eight-year high, but remains lower than the level 15 years ago, the DGBAS data showed.
Average monthly wages after adjustments for inflation from January to November last year rose 1.71 percent annually to NT$37,316, less than the NT$37,792 recorded in 2000, the data showed.
Including overtime and performance bonuses and other benefits, total monthly wages rose 3.05 percent annually to NT$46,936 in the period after adjustments for inflation, less than the NT$46,998 recorded in 2004.
Barclays PLC this week said the nation’s tepid wage growth poses the greatest challenge for the new government, as real wages grew by only 2 percent over the past decade, the second-lowest in Asia.
In a report published on Thursday, Barclays said that while government incentives might encourage businesses to raise wages in the short term, long-term improvements would require industry transitions.
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