The unemployment rate rose to 3.74 percent last month, ending two months of decline, as new graduates and part-time workers entered the job market, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
The number of unemployed — 440,000 people — might climb higher this month and beyond until the summer vacation comes to an end, the agency said.
“The nation’s jobless population increased by 9,000 last month as first-time job seekers picked up by an equal number, but fewer people quit or lost jobs to business closures and downsizing,” DGBAS Deputy Director Pan Ning-hsin (潘寧馨) told a news conference.
The unemployment rate gained 0.08 percentage points compared with May, but slid 0.18 percentage points from a year earlier, the DGBAS report showed.
The lagging economic indicator after seasonal adjustments came in at 3.78 percent, the lowest in 22 months, Pan said, attributing the retreat to an improving domestic economy.
A stable job market is critical to consumer spending and overall domestic demand as the nation’s export-focused economy has showed signs of a slowdown.
The unemployment rate for people with a bachelor’s degree or higher was 4.58 percent, while the rate for people with a junior college education was 4.02 percent, the agency said.
“That is because a skills mismatch hit young people with university diplomas the hardest,” Pan said.
The jobless rate also edged up to 3.73 percent among people with a high-school education and rose to 2.92 percent among people with a junior-high school education, the report found.
By demographic breakdown, the unemployment rates were 11.91 percent for people aged 15 to 24; 6.54 percent for the 25-to-29 age bracket; and 3.9 percent for the 25-to-44 group.
People aged 45 and 64 are the most stable, with a jobless rate of 1.98 percent, the report showed.
For the first six months of the year, the unemployment rate averaged 3.75 percent, it said.
An improving economy helped raise the average monthly wage — including take-home salaries, bonuses, overtime pay and other forms of compensation — to NT$48,848 in May, up 10.12 percent from April, thanks to Dragon Boat Festival bonuses, Pan said.
Many Taiwanese companies distribute bonuses three times a year: the Lunar New Year, the Dragon Boat Festival and the Mid-Autumn Festival.
Regular take-home wages averaged NT$39,883 in May, a 0.14 percent increase from April, the agency’s wage report said, after taking out volatile compensations.
For the first five months of the year, the average take-home wage rose 1.56 percent to a record NT$39,707, it said.
The real increase stood at 0.95 percent as inflation weakened purchasing ability by 0.6 percent during the same period, it said.
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