The nation’s unemployment rate fell to the lowest in 14 months last month as jobs increased on the back of the economic recovery, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
The jobless rate fell to 5.67 percent last month from 5.76 percent in February, with seasonally adjusted unemployment retreating for the seventh consecutive month to 5.64 percent from 5.65 percent recorded in the previous month, the agency said.
“More jobs were created than lost last month,” DGBAS deputy director Liu Tian-syh (劉天賜) said, adding that most new jobs were concentrated in the manufacturing, public administration and support service sectors.
“The manufacturing and public administration sectors each hired 5,000 people, while the support service industry, which includes security guards and office administrative assistants, added about 4,000 employees,” Liu said.
The number of people out of work fell 10,000 to 624,000 last month from February. Layoffs owing to downsizing or business closure declined 4.54 percent, posting the biggest contraction in nine months, DGBAS data showed.
Liu said that unemployment among the middle-aged and long-term unemployed — referring to people who have been out of work for more than a year — dropped for the first time in a long while last month, proof that the economy is indeed recovering.
DGBAS data showed that 139,000 middle-aged people were unemployed last month, down 5,000 from February, posting the first decline since September last year. Long-term unemployment also contracted for the first time in 11 months to 115,000 people, down 3,000 from February.
Cheng Cheng-mount (鄭貞茂), chief economist at Citigroup Taiwan Inc, told the Taipei Times by telephone that job market conditions would continue to improve as the economic recovery has “performed very well.
Amid concerns over whether the jobless rate is likely to drop to the government’s goal of below 5 percent by the end of the year, Liu said that 206,000 more jobs had to be created and that the number of unemployed should be cut down by another 68,000.
Cheng said attaining this goal was challenging but possible if it were supported by sustained growth momentum in the service and tourism sectors to complement growth in the technology industry.
Local online manpower agency 104 Job Bank said yesterday that the number of jobs available in the labor market had hit a new high this month since the global financial crisis broke out in 2008.
“The number of job opportunities reached 326,000 this month, posting an increase of 130,000, or 6 percent, compared with the same period last year,” the job bank said in a statement, adding that it was the largest growth since the economic downturn.
Computers and electronics saw the largest increase in the number of jobs created, followed by semiconductors, finance, banking and electronic parts, it said.
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