Government officials yesterday rebutted a media report claiming that job losses in Taiwan were the result of an exodus of Taiwanese manufacturing industries to China, saying that a shortage of labor, not unemployment, was the more serious problem facing the country.
Unemployment has been declining for 33 consecutive months, dropping to 4.27 percent in May, the lowest level since September 2008, Council of Labor Affairs Deputy Minister Pan Shih-wei (潘世偉) said.
“As the economy is recovering and gaining momentum, more jobs have been created. It is a labor shortage rather than unemployment that concerns us,” Pan told a press conference in response to a report by Bloomberg published earlier this week (Editor’s note: printed in today’s Taipei Times on page 9).
The Bloomberg article said the government’s slowness in easing investment rules and boosting the finance, transport and tourism industries had restricted the creation of new jobs and hurt the economy, even as Taiwanese manufacturers with production facilities in China have benefited from improving cross-strait ties.
The article also said the government’s failure to develop new growth industries had caused Taiwan to lag behind Singapore and Hong Kong.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇), who organized the press conference, downplayed the impact on capital outflow from Taiwan to China.
Because of its proximity to China, there is no way Taiwan could fend off economic absorption by China, nor should it resist economic interaction with China, the lawmaker said.
“What we should do is open the country to foreign investment and turn it into a springboard into China,” Wu said.
Not only Taiwan, but the US, Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan are all facing the magnetic effect of China, which has pulled those economies toward its market, Council for Economic Planning and Development Vice Chairman Hu Chung-ying (胡仲英) said.
“However, we should note that the effect is debilitating. Rapidly rising labor costs in China and a shift in its economic policy from export-oriented to domestic-demand oriented have forced some Taiwanese companies to move back to Taiwan,” Hu said.
Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics Vice Minister Luh Dun-jin (鹿篤瑾) said unemployment was the result of a mismatch between demand in the labor market and the skills of the individuals seeking employment.
The unemployment rate remains at an acceptable level despite the mismatch, Luh said, adding that the government could improve the situation by providing unemployed people with skills and assisting industries to upgrade.
Industrial Development Bureau Director-General Woody Duh (杜紫軍) said the number of jobs offered by factories in manufacturing alone in the first half of this year was 2.45 times higher than the number of job seekers.
“The problem is young people do not favor working in the manufacturing industry,” he said.
Additional reporting by staff writer
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