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Unemployment rate surged to record 6.13% last month

With new graduates continuing to enter the labor market, the nation's unemployment rate rose to a record 6.13 percent last month, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.

The figure was 0.06 percentage points higher than in July and 1.99 percentage points higher than a year earlier, the DGBAS said in a report.

Approximately 672,000 people were out of work last month, up 9,000 from the previous month, the report said.

Among the reasons cited for unemployment, first-time job seekers who failed to find work topped the list with 7,000 people, followed by 4,000 who resigned because of job dissatisfaction and 3,000 whose seasonal or temporary job contracts had ended.

On a seasonally adjusted basis, the unemployment rate stood at 6.07 percent, up 0.06 percentage points from the previous month and 2.03 percentage points from a year earlier, the statistics bureau's data showed.

For the first eight months of the year, the unemployment rate averaged 5.82 percent, up from 3.93 percent a year earlier, the data showed.

Polaris Research Institute (寶華綜合經濟研究院) president Liang Kuo-yuan (梁國源) said the jobless rate would remain high for the rest of the year.

Unless the economy shows a clear and concrete recovery, unemployment is unlikely to drop significantly, he said.

Polaris also forecast that the jobless rate would hover above 5 percent next year, although the economy is expected to expand a moderate 4.1 percent.

The DGBAS, however, said the latest figures indicated a “gradual, steady growth” in local employment, with the number of the employed increasing last month from the month before.

The number of employed picked up by 27,000 people, or 0.26 percent, to 10.28 million last month, which was the fifth consecutive monthly increase and the largest gain since September last year, DGBAS data showed.

The DGBAS also released the latest data on nominal wages for the nation's industry and services sectors, which showed that household purchasing power remained weak in July.

Citigroup Taiwan Inc chief economist Cheng Cheng-mount (鄭貞茂) said Taiwan's labor market had shown signs of stabilizing, with the number of layoffs last month — at 9,000 — being the smallest in the last three months.

The DGBAS also released the latest data on nominal wages for the nation's industry and services sectors, which showed that household purchasing power remained weak in July.

Nominal wages increased 3.56 percent month-on-month to NT$39,872 in July but dropped 6.72 percent from a year earlier, the data showed. In the first seven months of the year, wages declined 7.16 percent to NT$43,836 from a year earlier, the data showed.

Liang said the wage decline was an indication that any recovery in private consumption would likely be modest in the coming months.

ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY CRYSTAL HSU
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