The unemployment rate rose to 5.17 percent last month from 5.03 percent in the previous month, reflecting a decline in temporary jobs and increased numbers of work seekers after the Lunar New Year holiday, official data showed yesterday.
Some 518,000 people were out of work last month, an increase of 14,000 from January and up 10,000 from a year earlier, the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said.
The number is growing as electronics makers continued to shift production to factories in China.
"The government is in a race, trying to create jobs through public spending as private sectors are cutting back," said Vickie Hsieh, chief economist at President Securities Corp (統一投資).
Manufacturers such as Asus-tek Computer Inc (華碩電腦) and Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶電腦) have been firing workers as they transfer production to their factories in China.
Investment in China more than doubled from a year earlier in January to US$455 million, the government said last week.
Makro Taiwan Ltd (
expectations.
In December, it shut two stores and fired 300 workers in the south.
Allianz President Life Insurance Co, a venture between Allianz AG and Uni-President Enterprises Co (
The number of people who lost their jobs because of business closures and job cuts was 243,000 last month, down from 254,000 in January, the government said.
Without adjusting for seasonal changes, the jobless rate was 5.2 percent last month, compared with 5 percent in January.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
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