The unemployment rate last month rose to 3.73 percent, an increase of 0.06 percentage points from one month earlier, as new graduates entered the job market and a considerable number have not found jobs, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics said yesterday.
It is common for unemployment in June to rise slightly from May, Census Department Deputy Director Pan Ning-hsin (潘寧馨) said, adding that the seasonal increase averaged 0.06 to 0.09 percentage points in the past five years.
“The latest figures, though the highest in eight months, suggest the market held resilient,” despite an economic slowdown, Pan told a media briefing in Taipei.
The jobless rate, after seasonal adjustments, stood at 3.74 percent, 1 percentage point lower than May’s, a DGBAS report showed.
The total number of unemployed people rose by 8,000 to 445,000, with 9,000 of them first-time jobseekers and 2,000 looking for a better job, the report said.
The increase in these two groups more than offset the drop in the number of people who lost jobs to seasonal or temporary hiring, which was 2,000, it said.
The manufacturing industry is more susceptible to economic cyclical movements, as firms boost staffing levels in good times and turn conservative when visibility is poor, Pan said.
However, the working population increased 0.04 percent to 11.48 million, suggesting the slowdown is benign, thanks to support from service-oriented firms, especially hotels, restaurants and the healthcare sector, Pan said.
By education, university graduates had the highest unemployment rate at 5.32 percent, followed by high-school graduates at 3.49 percent and those with graduate degrees at 2.85 percent, the report said.
Unemployment was highest among people aged 20 to 24 (12.2 percent), followed by those aged 15 to 19 (9.66 percent) and those aged 25 to 29 (6.58 percent), it said.
The average unemployment period was 22.5 weeks, 0.5 weeks shorter than in May, it said.
The jobless period for first-time jobseekers averaged 23.6 weeks, a decrease of 6.8 weeks from May as people grew more realistic about work, the report said.
For the first half of the year, the unemployment rate averaged 3.68 percent, a 0.02 percentage point gain from the same period last year, Pan said.
Taoyuan and New Taipei City had the highest unemployment rate among the six special municipalities at 3.8 percent, while Taipei’s was 3.6 percent and Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung had 3.7 percent, DGBAS said.
Taoyuan residents are relatively younger and young people tend to quit when they are not happy with the “status quo,” Pan said.
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