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Unemployment reached new high in May

The nation’s unemployment hit a record high last month, after new college graduates began entering the job market but failed to find jobs, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.

“Unemployment rose 0.06 percentage points to 5.82 percent, or 633,000 people, last month, a new high since the beginning of the survey in 1978,” DGBAS Deputy Director Huang Jiann-jong (黃建中) said.

After seasonal adjustment, the index — a measure used to track the job market’s long-term evolution — gained 0.07 percentage points for 14 straight months to 5.84 percent, also the highest in the survey’s history, Huang said.

“Tallies show the labor market has yet to hit bottom,” Huang said. “More college graduates will seek to enter the work force, which, though picking up during the past two months, failed to catch up with the number of job seekers.”

The number of new graduates reached 320,000 last year. A recent survey by the Ministry of Education showed that some 44 percent, or 140,000 graduates, plan to seek employment, with the remainder either continuing their education or fulfilling compulsory military service.

The statistics official said that while unemployment was expected to continue climbing in coming months, the deterioration would soon come under control as the recession had appeared to slow down. The work force rose 0.15 percent, or by 15,000 people, for the second consecutive month last month, raising the labor participation rate to 57.76 percent, while overtime hours picked up by 0.5 hours for the third straight month in April, the report said.

Huang said the numbers showed increasing demand for labor, although firms would wait for more concrete signs before recruiting new employees.

Still, an extra 4,000 people lost jobs to business closures or downsizing, and the unemployment rate would have exceeded 6.22 percent in the absence of assorted job-­creation programs, the report said.

Since October, the government has added 95,000 contract workers to its payroll, the report said.

Polaris Research Institute (寶華綜合經濟研究院) president Liang Kuo-yuan (梁國源) said the government’s efforts to keep unemployment down were meaningless.

“The government should instead pay more attention to the plight of the unemployed and seek solutions,” he said.

Rising unemployment and declining wages were undermining efforts to turn the economy around, Liang said.

Nominal regular wages stood at NT$35,797 (US$1,088) in April, down 2.56 percent from a year earlier, the report said. The figure averaged at NT$35,488 this year, dropping 3.04 percent from last year, or down 2.93 percent after adjustment for inflation, the report said.

Also See: Polaris issues better GDP forecast
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