The nation’s unemployment rate fell 0.05 percentage points annually to 3.71 percent for the whole of last year, an 18-year low, backed by a stable economy, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
“The figure represented a new low for the past 18 years, after 2.99 percent in 2000, suggesting a stable job market,” DGBAS Deputy Director Pan Ning-hsin (潘寧馨) told the Taipei Times by telephone.
The jobless rate last month stood at 3.66 percent, down 0.04 percentage points from a month earlier, but after seasonal adjustments rose to 3.7 percent, the agency said.
The labor market remains stable, as the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate remained flat at between 3.67 percent and 3.7 percent from September 2017 to last month, Pan said.
The number of employed people advanced by 82,000 to 11.43 million for the whole of last year, up 0.73 percent year-on-year, with the number of people working in the service sector increasing 58,000 and the number in the manufacture sector rising 20,000, the agency said.
“As employment in the service and manufacturing sectors grew last year, we do not think the US-China trade dispute caused any damage to the local labor market, but we will continue monitoring the situation closely this year,” Pan said.
While the number of employed people had expanded by more than 100,000 per year before 2015, the nation has seen the number grow by fewer than 100,000 for the third consecutive year, he said.
He attributed the decelerating employment growth to a declining birthrate, which would cause a supply shortage, rather than a decrease in firms’ demand for talent.
“With manufacturers implementing automation to replace workers, the demand for talent would theoretically decline, but we have no practical evidence to prove that this is happening,” Pan said.
The number of unemployed people fell by 5,000 to 436,000, with first-time jobseekers decreasing by 2,000, the number of people who lost their jobs due to downsizing rising 1,000 and the number of people who lost their jobs due to seasonal hiring dropping by 1,000, the agency said.
The number of people who quit their jobs also dropped by 2,000, it said.
University graduates had the highest unemployment at 5.12 percent, followed by high-school graduates at 3.6 percent and those with graduate degrees at 2.9 percent, the agency said.
Unemployment was highest among people aged 20 to 24 at 11.98 percent, followed by those aged 15 to 19 at 8.46 percent and those aged 25 to 29 at 6.37 percent, it said.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”