The unemployment rate last month edged up to 3.95 percent from 3.87 percent in January, due to people switching jobs and companies shedding temporary and seasonal positions after the Lunar New Year holiday, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
The reading after seasonal adjustment stood at 3.94 percent, a fourth consecutive monthly rise, reflecting a gradual slowdown in the job market amid economic weakness, the statistics agency said.
“Unemployment gained 0.08 percentage points from a month earlier and climbed to a 17-month high as companies terminated temporary positions and people changed jobs after the Lunar New Year holiday,” DGBAS deputy section head Chang Yun-yun (張雲澐) told a news conference.
The increase fell within the normal range of 0.05 percentage points to 0.14 percentage points recorded for last month due to seasonality, Chang said, adding that the current level suggested a stable market, although it also started to slow.
Compared with a year earlier, the jobless rate picked up 0.26 percentage points, the DGBAS report showed, as firms in different sectors cut headcount to cope with softening business. The latest jobless figures translate into a jobless population of 462,000, an increase of 9,000 from January, the report said.
The number of people who lost their jobs due to seasonality increased by 5,000, while people who quit their jobs increased by 3,000, the report said.
The number of people who lost jobs due to business closures or downsizing rose by 1,000 and first-time jobseekers dropped at the same pace, the report said.
A stable job market is crucial for consumer spending and the overall economy, especially in the first half of this year, when exports are forecast to stay in negative territory due to weak external demand.
The central bank is expected to lower interest rates by an extra 12.5 basis points tomorrow to help support growth and curb inflows of “hot money” that is seeking yields amid an environment of global monetary easing.
The jobless rate was highest at 11.89 percent for the 15-to-24 age bracket and was 4.16 percent for the 25-to-44 age bracket, the report said, while people aged from 45 to 64 had a jobless rate of 2.2 percent.
Unemployment was highest among people with university degrees or higher at 4.9 percent, followed by 4.27 percent for those with only college diplomas, the report said.
The jobless rate for people with only high-school education averaged 3.91 percent and dropped to 3.16 percent for people with less education, the report said.
Average monthly wages stood at NT$75,321 in January, an increase of 44.94 percent from a year earlier, due to the distribution of year-end bonuses, according to a separate survey by the DGBAS.
Excluding such bonuses, monthly wages averaged NT$39,141, a mild increase of 1.54 percent from a year earlier, the report said.
SECOND-RATE: Models distilled from US products do not perform the same as the original and undo measures that ensure the systems are neutral, the US’ cable said The US Department of State has ordered a global push to bring attention to what it said are widespread efforts by Chinese companies, including artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek (深度求索), to steal intellectual property from US AI labs, according to a diplomatic cable. The cable, dated Friday and sent to diplomatic and consular posts around the world, instructs diplomatic staff to speak to their foreign counterparts about “concerns over adversaries’ extraction and distillation of US AI models.” Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ones to lower the costs of training a powerful new
Shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) have repeatedly hit new highs, but an equity analyst said the stock’s valuation remains within a reasonable range and any pullback would likely be technical. The contract chipmaker’s historical price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio has ranged between 20 and 30, Cathay Futures Consultant Co (國泰證期) analyst Tsai Ming-han (蔡明翰) told Central News Agency. With market consensus projecting that TSMC would post earnings per share of about NT$100 (US$3.17) this year, supported by strong global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications, and the stock currently trading at a P/E ratio of below 25, Tsai said the valuation
The artificial intelligence (AI) boom has triggered a seismic reshuffling of global equity markets, with Taiwan and South Korea muscling past European nations one by one. With its stock market now valued at nearly US$4.3 trillion, Taiwan surpassed the UK, Europe’s biggest market, earlier this month, data compiled by Bloomberg showed. South Korea is about US$140 billion away from doing the same. The tech-heavy Asian markets have shot past Germany and France in the past seven months. The shift is largely down to massive gains in shares of three companies that provide essential hardware for AI: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電),
The US Department of Commerce last week ordered multiple chip equipment companies to halt shipments of certain tools to China’s second-largest chipmaker, Hua Hong Semiconductor Ltd (華虹半導體), its latest action to slow the country’s development of advanced chips, two people familiar with the matter said. The department sent letters to at least a handful of companies informing them of restrictions on tools and other materials destined for two Hua Hong facilities US officials believe make China’s most sophisticated chips, the people said. Top US chip equipment companies Lam Research Corp, Applied Materials Inc and KLA Corp, each of which has significant
RSS