The number of people registering to take vocational license exams has grown rapidly in recent years, especially among the young, Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) statistics showed.
By the end of last year, 4.6 million technical and vocational licenses had been approved and issued to examinees in the 35 years since the program was launched.
In recent years, the number of people registering has also increased by more than 50,000 a year — last year, close to 600,000 people registered, roughly an 11 percent increase from 2008.
On average, 67 percent of those who register pass the exams and are approved for a license.
Council data also showed that younger students and workers are increasingly eager to become license holders.
About 70 percent of those who obtained a technical or vocational license last year were under the age of 20; those between the ages of 21 to 30 accounted for about 14 percent of new license holders.
As more women join the workforce, the gender mix of license holders has also shifted dramatically, from a preponderance of male awardees to almost fifty-fifty.
Of the 410,000 technical and vocational licenses approved last year, about 200,000 were given to women.
Officials say this phenomenon can also be attributed to a surge in demand for licensed childcare and caregiver services.
In related news, a recent study by the council’s Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH) showed that workers who hold jobs that require them to stand for long periods of time are prone to develop varicose veins.
This occurs because gravity impedes blood circulation and can lead to blockages and pain, IOSH section chief Hsu Jin-huei (徐儆暉) said.
Most workers with varicose veins have only mild symptoms such as swollen veins, uncomfortable numbness in the legs or slight pain, but if left untreated, serious complications such as ulcers can develop.
The institute advises those who are at risk to wear stockings specially designed to prevent varicose veins, exercise regularly and rest for a few minutes after every two hours standing.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not