The unemployment rate fell 0.16 percentage points to 4.45 percent last month, with the number of people out of work declining by 16,000 people to 452,000, the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said in a statement yesterday.
The latest figure is the lowest monthly jobless rate since June 2001, when it was 4.51 percent.
After seasonal adjustments, the jobless rate was 4.54 percent last month, down from 4.64 percent in January, the agency said.
Last month's figure of 4.45 percent compared favorably to Germany's unemployment rate of 10.9 percent, France's 9.6 percent, Canada's 7.5 percent, Hong Kong's 7.2 percent, the US' 5.7 percent, Japan's 5 percent and Singapore's 4.5 percent, the agency said. However, South Korea's jobless rate was 3.4 percent and the UK's was 3.1 percent.
The workforce grew 14,000 to 10.17 million last month and the labor participation ratio was 57.41 percent, up 0.03 percentage points month-on-month, as companies expanded and increased hiring to meet surging overseas demand.
As a result, the number of people who lost their jobs because of business closures and job cuts fell to 173,000 last month from 183,000 in February, the agency said.
For the first three months of the year, the agency said the jobless rate was averaged 4.53 percent, down 0.56 percentage points from the same period last year.
The Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER), which last week revised upward its economic growth forecast for the nation this year to 4.67 percent, said the strong economic recovery was increasing the demand for labor.
CIER predicted the jobless rate would reach 4.6 percent this year, down 0.39 percentage points from 4.99 percent last year.
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