Mon, Mar 09, 2009 page12

• Graduates negative on job search

  HARD TO FIND In a recent questionnaire, 86 percent of students were pessimistic about their prospects of finding a job after graduation, up from 67 percent last year

  • By Elizabeth Tchii / STAFF REPORTER
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  About 88 percent of soon-to-be college graduates are worried about the job opportunities they will encounter when they finish school in June, a local job bank said yesterday.

  As employers battle declining business and refrain from hiring new recruits, 86 percent of students taking college majors traditionally considered recession-proof, such engineering, indicated that they felt stress and pessimism, compared to 67 percent just three months ago, the 1111 Job Bank said.

  “Sixty-three percent of graduates from last year [2008] are still unemployed. Add that number to the mass exodus of new graduates this year and you get the idea,” said Ryan Wu (吳睿穎), chief operating officer of 1111 Job Bank.

  While entry-level job seekers said they would be willing to lower their monthly salary expectations to NT$27,034 this year, Wu said 1111 Job Bank’s corporate clients were only willing to pay NT$24,986 a month.

  Wu made the remarks as National Taiwan University held its annual campus recruiting event yesterday, which featured 168 participating companies compared to more than 200 last year, with a majority from the technology and financial services sectors.

  Citibank representatives said the firm planned to increase local hiring, even though its parent Citigroup is in financial disarray and saw shares close last week at US$1.03 in New York trading.

  In general, corporate representatives were reluctant to disclose what base salaries were and the number of positions open this year, while referring candidates to their online application sites.

  With such bleak job prospects, Wu said job seekers should be open to employment outside Taiwan.

  “Even if salary and expenses break even in the end, at least they would be gaining valuable work experiences,” he told the Taipei Times on the sideline of the campus job fair.

  In January, 5.26 percent of college graduates were unemployed, compared to a 5.31 percent unemployment rate as a whole, the government’s latest unemployment data showed on Feb. 26.

  Kilbinder Dosanjh, a senior economist at The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), said Taiwan’s unemployment rate would surge to 10 percent by the end of the year, the Central News Agency reported on Feb. 21.

  Wu said high unemployment was likely to persist for many more months and that the economy was much worse off than the government’s data showed.

  The government’s unemployment rate is calculated to any person who is available to work and currently seeking work, but is without work.

  “But this definition does not take into account hidden unemployment,” Wu said, referring to a group of people “working less than 35 hours per week, who are not putting their expertise to use and who are making less than NT$10,368 per month.”

  In addition, Wu doubted the efficacy of consumer vouchers issued earlier this year.

  “If the NT$82.9 billion [US$2.3 billion] budget had been spent on unemployment benefits, at least each person could minimally sustain themselves on NT$138,000 for a year or at least six months,” Wu said.
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