The unemployment rate last month edged down 0.03 percentage points to 3.64 percent, as fewer people quit their jobs, which more than made up for seasonal and temporary job losses, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
“The job market in January was stable as the labor participation and unemployment figures showed,” Census Department Deputy Director Pan Ning-hsin (潘寧馨) told a media briefing.
The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate stood at 3.71, down 0.01 percentage point from one month earlier, the agency said.
Photo: CNA
The latest data, collected from Jan. 5 to 11, did not reflect the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak that is hurting businesses such as tourism, hospitality and retail, and dampening confidence among jobseekers, Pan said.
The labor participation rate could take a downturn from the current level at 59.21 percent, Pan said, pointing out that the SARS outbreak in 2003 did not affect the jobless rate, but weakened labor participation for four straight months.
The trend of people switching jobs after the Lunar New Year holiday might slow this year, as people hold onto their job until the epidemic shows signs of stabilizing, he said.
If the outbreak persists and spreads further, companies might ask employees to take unpaid leave, cut back on operations or shut down altogether, Pan said, adding that it is too early to tell.
The jobless data might have failed to reflect the real situation, as many restaurants and retail stores have already cut working days due to a sharp decline in business, while a growing number of people are under different degrees of quarantine.
Last month, the number of unemployed people stood at 436,000, a decline of 3,000 from one month earlier, due to a fall in the number of first-time jobseekers and people who resigned, the agency said.
By education level, university graduates had the highest unemployment rate at 5.22 percent, followed by high-school graduates at 3.43 percent and people with graduate degrees at 2.88 percent, the survey showed.
People aged 20 to 24 had the highest unemployment rate at 11.98 percent; followed by the 15-19 age bracket at 8.86 percent; the 25-29 group at 6.51 percent; and the 30-34 group at 3.3 percent, it said.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last