The number of temp workers who are dispatched by employment agencies reached 33,000 people last month, up 151.8 percent from a year ago, the 104 Job Bank said in a report yesterday.
The online manpower agency said financial, insurance, electronics and manufacturing sectors were among local industries offering the most temporary jobs.
“With the economic recovery picking up momentum demand for temp workers among enterprises has increased markedly,” Shelly Wu (吳麗雪), the job bank’s operations officer, said in the report.
Nearly 70 percent of respondents said temporary hiring was not only more flexible, but it also increases corporate competitiveness, Wu said.
The survey, which polled 1,016 people between Jan. 28 and 29, showed that 34 percent of enterprises said they hired temp workers to reduce human resource costs while 31 percent said they did so as a result of seasonal factors.
Wu said that more and more people were starting to accept temp positions as the number of jobseekers who were willing to accept positions on a temporary contract had increased by 40 percent in the past three years.
The Council of Labor Affairs recently drafted amendments to the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法) stating that temps may not exceed more than 10 percent of a company’s payroll and that a company cannot choose temps dispatched by employment agencies.
More than 30 percent of corporations said they would continue to hire employees on a temporary basis, although nearly 40 percent did not express an opinion on the matter, the report said.
Wu said that white-collar temporary hiring was a growing trend and some temps are paid at an even higher wage than regular salaried workers.
“For instance, some companies pay more than NT$60,000 a month to recruit software engineers or more than NT$50,000 a month to hire financial professionals on a temporary basis,” she said.
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