The labor market was stable last month despite a slowdown in exports and GDP growth, with the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate remaining flat from the past 12 months, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
The unemployment rate rose to 3.72 percent last month from 3.64 percent in January, as more people quit and temporary contracts were terminated ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday last month.
After seasonal adjustments, the unemployment gauge was 3.71 percent, down slightly from 3.72 percent recorded in January, the agency said.
“Given that the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate has hovered between 3.69 and 3.73 percent in the past 12 months, we can say that the labor market has remained stable,” DGBAS Deputy Director Pan Ning-hsin (潘寧馨) told a news conference in Taipei.
Lackluster exports, which last month contracted for the fourth consecutive month and showed the biggest annual decline of 8.8 percent, had limited impact on the labor market, Pan said.
“Workers in the manufacturing sector are most vulnerable to worsening exports, but we thankfully did not see the unemployment rate rise despite declining exports, as the number of employees in the manufacturing sector totaled 3.07 million last month, up 0.46 percent year-on-year,” Pan said.
However, if exports continue to decline, the number of manufacturing jobs is likely to grow at a slower pace, similar to when exports plunged in 2015 and 2016, he said.
The average number of manufacturing jobs rose by 4,000 from 2015 to 2016, much less than the average annual growth of 15,000, DGBAS data showed.
Although the unemployment rate remained stable, Taiwanese employers last year became more conservative about recruitment amid economic uncertainties, Pan said.
The number of unemployed people usually peaks in August as university students graduate, but gradually declines before the Lunar New Year, Pan said.
From August last year to last month, the number decreased by 18,000, much less than the 23,000 recorded in the same period a year earlier, Pan said, adding that it was also a three-year low.
“We hope that employers will hire more people this year, as some uncertainties have diminished,” he said.
The jobless rate for the first two months of the year stood at 3.68 percent, up 0.01 percentage points from the same period a year earlier, while the labor participation rate increased 0.19 percentage points to 59.08 percent, DGBAS data showed.
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],”