The unemployment rate fell to its lowest level in five-and-a-half-years last month, as more first-time jobseekers landed jobs, which helped lift the number of the employed, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
The jobless rate improved to 4.02 percent last month, down 0.06 percentage points from 4.08 percent in December last year, DGBAS said in its monthly report.
That is the lowest level since June 2008.
The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate also dropped 0.07 percentage points to 4.14 percent last month from 4.21 percent in December, the report said.
“The unemployment rate has improved to the level before the global financial crisis struck the nation’s economy and labor market in late 2008,” DGBAS Deputy Director Lo Yi-ling (羅怡玲) told a press conference in Taipei.
There were 462,000 people unemployed last month, a drop of 7,000 from the previous month, the report’s data showed.
The number of first-time jobseekers who failed to get an offer declined by 6,000 last month from December last year, reflecting a recent improvement in the youth market.
The jobless rate for the 15-to-24 age group decreased to 12.69 percent last month, from 13.1 percent the previous month, a fifth straight month of decline, the agency’s statistics showed.
However, there was only a slight rise in the number of employed last month — to 11.04 million — up 7,000 from a month earlier, as the economy’s soft expansion could not provide strong enough momentum for the job market, Lo added.
The number of the unemployed may increase this month given historical trends, as many people looking to change jobs quit before the Lunar New Year holiday, he said.
The agency said real monthly salaries averaged NT$44,739 last year after taking inflation into account, less than the NT$44,798 recorded in 1998, an indication that salaried workers may feel they are earning less than they were 15 years ago.
The average monthly wage in the industrial and service sectors climbed to a new high of NT$37,716 last month, an increase of 0.99 percent from a year earlier, the DGBAS report said.
The overall average monthly wage, including bonuses and compensation, rose 0.17 percent to a new high of NT$45,965 last year compared with 2012, the report said.
However, after adjusting for inflation — which climbed 0.79 percent year-on-year last year — the real average wage, including bonuses and compensation, fell 0.62 percent from 2012 to NT$44,739 per month, the report showed.
Elon Musk’s lieutenants have reached out to chip industry suppliers, including Applied Materials Inc, Tokyo Electron Ltd and Lam Research Corp, for his envisioned Terafab, early steps in an audacious and likely arduous attempt to break into the production of cutting-edge chips. Staff working for the joint venture between Tesla Inc and Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) have sought price quotes and delivery times for an array of chipmaking gear, people familiar with the matter said. In past weeks, they’ve contacted makers of photomasks, substrates, etchers, depositors, cleaning devices, testers and other tools, according to the people, who asked not to
Taichung reported the steepest fall in completed home prices among the six special municipalities in the first quarter of this year, data compiled by Taiwan Realty Co (台灣房屋) showed yesterday. From January through last month, the average transaction price for completed homes in Taichung fell 8 percent from a year earlier to NT$299,000 (US$9,483) per ping (3.3m²), said Taiwan Realty, which compiled the data based on the government’s price registration platform. The decline could be attributed to many home buyers choosing relatively affordable used homes to live in themselves, instead of newly built homes in the city’s prime property market, Taiwan Realty
JET JUICE: The war on Iran’s secondary effects have seen fuel prices skyrocket, knocking flight schedules down to earth in return as airlines struggle with costs Airline passengers should brace for more irritation in the next few months as carriers worldwide cancel flights and ground planes to cope with stratospheric increases in jet-fuel prices. Dutch flag carrier KLM is the latest company to cut its schedule, saying on Thursday that it would scrap 80 return flights at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in the coming month. That puts it in the same league as United Airlines Holdings Inc, Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, which have all pruned itineraries to mitigate costs. Global capacity for next month has been reduced by about 3 percentage points, with all
Taiwan is attracting a growing number of foreign jobseekers as companies increasingly recruit overseas talent to ease labor shortages and expand global reach, recruitment platform 104 Job Bank (104人力銀行) said yesterday. More than 40,000 foreign nationals searched for jobs in Taiwan through the platform last year, a 28 percent increase from a year earlier, the company said. Malaysians accounted for the largest share of overseas jobseekers at 12.2 percent, followed by Indonesians at 11.9 percent and Vietnamese at 10.8 percent. Indonesian applicants surged more than 50 percent year-on-year, while Vietnamese jobseekers rose by more than 30 percent. Applicants from the
RSS