Improving global economic sentiment has prompted a growing number of Taiwanese to look for new jobs after the Lunar New Year holiday, reflecting a rising confidence in the local labor market, reports by online manpower agencies showed yesterday.
The recovering economy also boosted corporate hiring, the reports showed.
A report by 104 Job Bank (104人力銀行) said that its registered jobseekers applied for new jobs more than 290,000 times on Tuesday, the second working day after the holiday.
That was a 5 percent increase over the 270,000 applications recorded on Jan. 31 last year — the second working day after last year’s Lunar New Year holiday — and marked the highest level in three years, the agency said in a statement.
The number of employers posting jobs on its database was 22,000 on Tuesday, up 25 percent from the same period last year, with the total number of jobs increasing by 12 percent, the statement said.
“The rebound in various economic indicators has made employers increase hiring,” 104 Job Bank marketing director Regis Chen (陳力孑) said in the statement.
A similar trend was reflected in a report by 1111 Job Bank (1111人力銀行).
It said that total full-time job openings posted on its database stood at 224,000 after the holiday, up nearly 10 percent from a year earlier and also marking a record post-Lunar New Year period high.
“Various employers posted a large number of jobs after the Lunar New Year to cover gaps, because more employees resigned before the holidays to transition to another job,” 1111 Job Bank public relations director Henry Ho (何啟聖) said in a statement.
Citing the example of Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc (日月光半導體), one of the nation’s major chip packagers and testers, Ho said the company has posted 500 job listings his agency’s database, hoping to recruit those people in the second quarter.
The rise of both demand and supply in the labor market indicates expectations of a strong rebound in momentum ahead, Ho said.
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