The unemployment rate last month fell to 3.66 percent, down 0.04 percentage points from a month earlier, as fewer people lost their jobs to business downsizing or temporary hiring, although more people quit, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
The data represented the lowest March unemployment level in 18 years, supported by a stable economy that helped firms maintain steady headcounts, it said.
“Many people who wanted to switch jobs landed new positions,” which is why the jobless gauge dropped from 3.7 percent in February, DGBAS Deputy Director Pan Ning-hsin (潘寧馨) told a media briefing.
Taiwanese who are dissatisfied with their work tend to change jobs after collecting year-end bonuses ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday.
The seasonal jobless rate stood at 3.67 percent, affirming a stable job market, Pan said.
The statistics agency is likely to raise its growth forecast on Friday for the nation’s economy last quarter and this year, after outbound shipments picked up at a faster pace than its February projection.
However, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (台積電) conservative business guidance last week cast a shadow on the economy.
Taiwan is home to the world’s largest contract chipmakers, with semiconductors accounting for 30 percent of the nation’s exports.
The DGBAS’ latest report showed that the number of unemployed people declined by 5,000 to 433,000, first-time jobseekers decreased by 2,000, and people who lost their jobs to business downsizing and seasonal hiring dropped by 2,000 each.
The number of people who quit increased by 1,000, it added.
The labor force grew by 6,000 people to 11.4 million, as service-oriented sectors supplied 59.35 percent of jobs, industrial sectors contributed 35.7 percent and agricultural sectors the remaining 4.91 percent, the report said.
By education breakdown, university graduates had the highest unemployment rate at 5.05 percent, followed by high-school graduates at 3.6 percent and those with graduate degrees at 2.87 percent, it said.
Unemployment was highest among people aged between 20 and 24 at 11.75 percent, followed by the 15-to-19 age group at 8.06 percent and those aged from 25 to 29 at 6.4 percent, it added.
The unemployment period averaged 23.5 weeks last month, shorter by a half week from one month earlier, it said.
However, first-time jobseekers reported greater difficulty securing jobs, with their unemployment duration lasting for 30.2 weeks on average, the report said.
For the first three months of the year, the jobless rate averaged 3.68 percent, the lowest in 18 years for the period, it 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,
RATIONING: The proposal would give the Trump administration ample leverage to negotiate investments in the US as it decides how many chips to give each country US officials are debating a new regulatory framework for exporting artificial intelligence (AI) chips and are considering requiring foreign nations to invest in US AI data centers or security guarantees as a condition for granting exports of 200,000 chips or more, according to a document seen by Reuters. The rules are not yet final and could change. They would be the first attempt to regulate the flow of AI chips to US allies and partners since US President Donald Trump’s administration said it rescinded its predecessor’s so-called AI diffusion rules. Those rules sought to keep a significant amount of AI
Apple Inc increased iPhone production in India by about 53 percent last year and now makes a quarter of its marquee devices there, reflecting the US company’s efforts to avoid tariffs on China. The company assembled about 55 million iPhones in India last year, up from 36 million a year earlier, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because the numbers aren’t public. Apple makes about 220 million to 230 million iPhones a year globally, with India’s share of the total increasing rapidly. Apple has accelerated its expansion in the world’s most populous country in recent years, bolstered
A new worry has been rippling across the stock market lately: Entire businesses, not just their employees, might be thrown out of work. While most economists say fears of an artificial intelligence (AI) job apocalypse are overblown, seismic shifts have happened in the past after big tech breakthroughs. The IT revolution of the 1990s led to a surge in productivity that sped up the US economy for several years. It also rendered companies or even industries largely redundant — from travel agents and stockbrokers to classified advertising and newspapers, or video rental stores. Economists expect AI would deliver higher productivity,
RSS