The unemployment rate last month declined 0.09 percentage points from August to 3.99 percent, although it rose 0.10 percentage points from the same period last year, government figures released yesterday showed.
After seasonal adjustments, the jobless rate declined 0.02 percentage points to 3.93 percent last month, due to a drop in first-time jobseekers, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics said.
That means 469,000 people were out of work, a decrease of 11,000 compared with August, the agency said.
The jobless rate tends to rise in July and August because of the entry to the job market of new university graduates.
The number of first-time jobseekers fell 7,000 from a month earlier, indicating that more new graduates found jobs, agency Census Department Deputy Director Pan Ning-hsin (潘寧馨) said.
Last month, the number of people who quit their jobs fell by 3,000 and the number of those who lost their jobs due to temporary or seasonal contracts dropped by 1,000, the data showed.
However, the number of those who lost their jobs because of downsizing or closures rose by 1,000 from the previous month.
The jobless rate among those aged 20 to 24 was 13.03 percent, down 0.4 percentage points from a month earlier, while the unemployment rate among those aged 25 to 29 was 6.86 percent, down 0.12 percentage points month-on-month, the data showed.
The jobless rate among people with a university degree or higher stood at 4.95 percent, down 0.16 percentage points from a month earlier, the agency said.
The labor participation rate fell 0.14 percentage points from a month earlier to 58.79 percent, with the work force totaling 11.75 million people, down 25,000, or 0.21 percent, from a month earlier.
In the first nine months of this year, the unemployment rate averaged 3.94 percent, up 0.20 percentage points from the previous year.
During the nine-month period, the average labor participation rate also rose 0.09 percentage points year-on-year to 58.72 percent, the agency said.
In related news, average earnings inched up 1.37 percent from January to August, but a rise in consumer prices chipped away at purchasing power, agency statistics showed.
Average monthly earnings rose to NT$39,146 in the first eight months, a record high for the period, but that was muted by a 1.38 percent rise in inflation, the agency said.
Consequently, real earnings fell 1.2 percent in the eight-month period, the agency said.
Average monthly earnings in the industrial and service sectors was NT$39,318 in August, an increase of 0.29 percent from the previous month and 1.4 percent year-on-year, the agency said.
HORMUZ ISSUE: The US president said he expected crude prices to drop at the end of the war, which he called a ‘minor excursion’ that could continue ‘for a little while’ The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait started reducing oil production, as the near-closure of the crucial Strait of Hormuz ripples through energy markets and affects global supply. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) is “managing offshore production levels to address storage requirements,” the company said in a statement, without giving details. Kuwait Petroleum Corp said it was lowering production at its oil fields and refineries after “Iranian threats against safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.” The war in the Middle East has all but closed Hormuz, the narrow waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the open seas,
Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) yesterday said the DRAM supply crunch could extend through 2028, as the artificial intelligence (AI) boom has led the world’s major memory makers to dramatically reduce production of standard DRAM and allocate a significant portion of their capacity for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips. The most severe supply constraints would stretch to the first half of next year due to “very limited” increases in new DRAM capacity worldwide, Nanya Technology president Lee Pei-ing (李培瑛) told a news briefing. The company plans to increase monthly 12-inch wafer capacity to 20,000 in the first half of 2028 after a
Taiwan has enough crude oil reserves for more than 100 days and sufficient natural gas reserves for more than 11 days, both above the regulatory safety requirement, Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said yesterday, adding that the government would prioritize domestic price stability as conflicts in the Middle East continue. Overall, energy supply for this month is secure, and the government is continuing efforts to ensure sufficient supply for next month, Kung told reporters after meeting with representatives from business groups at the ministry in Taipei. The ministry has been holding daily cross-ministry meetings at the Executive Yuan to ensure
Property transactions in the nation’s six special municipalities plunged last month, as a lengthy Lunar New Year holiday combined with ongoing credit tightening dampened housing market activity, data compiled by local land administration offices released on Monday showed. The six cities recorded a total of 10,480 property transfers last month, down 42.5 percent from January and marking the second-lowest monthly level on record, the data showed. “The sharp drop largely reflected seasonal factors and tighter credit conditions,” Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房屋) deputy research manager Chen Chin-ping (陳金萍) said. The nine-day Lunar New Year holiday fell in February this year, reducing
RSS