The nation’s unemployment rate fell for a fourth straight month to 5.74 percent last month, with the number of people without work dropping to 632,000, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
For the whole year, however, the jobless rate hit a record high of 5.85 percent last year, the DGBAS said.
If the economy continues to recover at the current pace, the DGBAS and economists said the jobless rate could decline to pre-recession levels of below 5 percent in the second half of the year.
Speaking at a press conference yesterday, DGBAS deputy director Liu Tian-syh (劉天賜) said the 0.12-percentage-point drop in the jobless rate to 5.74 percent last month was “the lowest since last February.”
The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate also contracted for the third consecutive month to 5.8 percent last month, down 0.18 percentage points from a month before, the agency said.
Liu attributed last month’s drop chiefly to increased employment in service sectors and a surge in temporary jobs toward the end of last year.
Altogether, the number of unemployed people stood at 639,000 last year, representing a year-on-year increase of 41.96 percent, or 189,000 people, the agency said.
However, unemployment appears to be stabilizing as companies are more willing to hire workers to meet a pickup in exports and imports.
Asked whether the jobless rate could slide to 4.9 percent this year — a goal set by the Council of Economic Planning and Development — Liu said the government “would have to create between 120,000 and 130,000 jobs.”
The DGBAS also said that the average wages in the first 11 months of last year contracted 4.92 percent year-on-year to NT$42,451 (US$1,327), the lowest since 2004.
Cheng Cheng-mount (鄭貞茂), chief economist at Citigroup Inc Taiwan, said that on an annually adjusted basis, the unemployment rate beat its forecast of 5.93 percent.
Although the unemployment rate “remains relatively high, it has recorded a gradual decrease, suggesting that the job market is beginning to recover,” Cheng said, adding that the economy was growing mildly.
“If the economic rebound continues, the unemployment rate is likely to drop below 5 percent,” he said.
Liang Kuo-yuan (梁國源), president of the Taipei-based Polaris Research Institute (寶華綜合經濟研究院), agreed, saying this year would be “much better” than last year.
“It [the unemployment rate] could drop below 5 percent, but a strong economic rebound is needed and recovering industries must be able to recruit workers,” Liang said, adding that the service sector could see a higher increase in employment.
WEAKER ACTIVITY: The sharpest deterioration was seen in the electronics and optical components sector, with the production index falling 13.2 points to 44.5 Taiwan’s manufacturing sector last month contracted for a second consecutive month, with the purchasing managers’ index (PMI) slipping to 48, reflecting ongoing caution over trade uncertainties, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The decline reflects growing caution among companies amid uncertainty surrounding US tariffs, semiconductor duties and automotive import levies, and it is also likely linked to fading front-loading activity, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said. “Some clients have started shifting orders to Southeast Asian countries where tariff regimes are already clear,” Lien told a news conference. Firms across the supply chain are also lowering stock levels to mitigate
IN THE AIR: While most companies said they were committed to North American operations, some added that production and costs would depend on the outcome of a US trade probe Leading local contract electronics makers Wistron Corp (緯創), Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), Inventec Corp (英業達) and Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶) are to maintain their North American expansion plans, despite Washington’s 20 percent tariff on Taiwanese goods. Wistron said it has long maintained a presence in the US, while distributing production across Taiwan, North America, Southeast Asia and Europe. The company is in talks with customers to align capacity with their site preferences, a company official told the Taipei Times by telephone on Friday. The company is still in talks with clients over who would bear the tariff costs, with the outcome pending further
NEGOTIATIONS: Semiconductors play an outsized role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development and are a major driver of the Taiwan-US trade imbalance With US President Donald Trump threatening to impose tariffs on semiconductors, Taiwan is expected to face a significant challenge, as information and communications technology (ICT) products account for more than 70 percent of its exports to the US, Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said on Friday. Compared with other countries, semiconductors play a disproportionately large role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development, Lien said. As the sixth-largest contributor to the US trade deficit, Taiwan recorded a US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US last year — up from US$47.8 billion in 2023 — driven by strong
RESHAPING COMMERCE: Major industrialized economies accepted 15 percent duties on their products, while charges on items from Mexico, Canada and China are even bigger US President Donald Trump has unveiled a slew of new tariffs that boosted the average US rate on goods from across the world, forging ahead with his turbulent effort to reshape international commerce. The baseline rates for many trading partners remain unchanged at 10 percent from the duties Trump imposed in April, easing the worst fears of investors after the president had previously said they could double. Yet his move to raise tariffs on some Canadian goods to 35 percent threatens to inject fresh tensions into an already strained relationship, while nations such as Switzerland and New Zealand also saw increased
RSS