The unemployment rate last month fell to 3.86 percent, a decline of 0.03 percentage points from March, with fewer people quitting while others lost their jobs to business downsizing and closures, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics said yesterday.
The latest jobless data represented a 0.23 percentage point increase from a year earlier, suggesting that companies remained conservative about hiring amid a soft economy, the agency said.
“The monthly drop in the unemployment rate was the smallest in 15 years, indicating that economic weakness weighed on the job market,” deputy section head Chang Yun-yun (張雲澐) told a news conference.
The unemployment rate after seasonal adjustments was 3.97 percent, up from 3.92 percent in March, signaling that the nation’s job market is slowly deteriorating, the report said.
The number of unemployed people in the nation dropped to 451,000, a decline of 4,000 from March, the report said.
The drop was the result of the number of first-time job seekers and people who lost their jobs due to seasonal factors falling by 2,000, more than offsetting the 1,000 people who lost their jobs due to business closures and downsizing, the report said.
For the first four months of the year, unemployment rates averaged 3.89 percent, an increase for the first time in seven years, the agency said.
A stable job market is crucial for consumer spending and the overall economy, with a lack of external demand this year forecast to drag GDP growth.
The central bank cut interest rates three times over the past two quarters in the hope that lower borrowing costs would spur private investment and moderate hot money inflows.
More than 20 nations have adopted negative interest rates in an attempt to guide funds from savings to investment.
The unemployment rate was highest (11.78 percent) in the 15-to-24 age bracket and dropped to 4.08 percent for the 25-to-44 age bracket, while people aged 45 to 64 had a jobless rate of 2.08 percent, the report said.
Unemployment was highest among people with university degrees or higher at 4.7 percent, followed by individuals with college diplomas at 4.12 percent, the report said.
The unemployment rate for people with only a high-school education averaged 3.82 percent, while those with a lower level of education averaged 3.18 percent, the report said.
In a related development, average take-home pay stood totaled NT$39,208 per month in March, a 1.78 percent increase from a year earlier, the agency said in a separate report.
Average monthly wages, including bonuses and other compensation, totaled NT$43,880 in March, an increase of 2.01 percent from a year earlier, the report said.
In the first quarter of the year, take-home wages averaged NT$38,995 per month, with the figure rising to NT$59,580 after year-end bonuses, the report said, adding that the latter figure marked a 1.56 percent drop from a year earlier, as firms distributed smaller bonuses.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
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