Unemployment fell 0.25 percentage points to 5.14 percent last month, the lowest level in 17 months, with enterprises willing to hire more people amid the economic recovery, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate dropped for the ninth consecutive month to 5.22 percent, down 0.21 percentage points from the previous month, the statistics agency said, adding that the number of employed people reached 10,459,000, up 0.43 percent, or 45,000, from April.
DGBAS Deputy Director Liu Tian-syh (劉天賜) attributed the continued unemployment rate decline to the robust economic recovery, which prompted local companies to hire, and the government’s employment incentive programs.
“Without the incentive programs, last month’s jobless rate would have reached 5.55 percent,” Liu said. “The number of jobs in public service created by the programs increased by about 90,000 last month, compared with October 2008.”
The agency said the unemployed population decreased by 26,000 people, or 4.45 percent, from a month earlier to 567,000 last month. Of those, layoffs because of downsizing or business closures decreased by 19,000, or 7.11 percent, posting the 11th consecutive month of decline.
Liu said 131,000 more jobs were needed and that the number of unemployed should be cut down by a further 11,000 if the government is to bring down the unemployment rate to below 5 percent by the end of the year.
Nevertheless, Taiwan’s unemployment rate is still the highest among other Asian economies, outstripping Japan at 5.1 percent, Hong Kong at 4.6 percent, South Korea at 3.2 percent and Singapore at 2.2 percent, data showed.
Cheng Cheng-mount (鄭貞茂), chief economist at Citigroup Taiwan Inc, also cast doubt on whether unemployment would continue to decline when the government’s employment incentive measures end.
“Those employment subsidy programs have distorted the actual condition of the labor market and they cannot last forever,” Cheng said by telephone.
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