The unemployment rate last month rose to 3.82 percent, an increase of 0.09 percentage points from June, as corporate downsizing affected job opportunities for new graduates, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics said yesterday.
The number is the highest in 11 months and 0.01 percentage points higher than a year earlier, suggesting that the job market is stable, despite a seasonal pickup and an economic slowdown, Census Department Deputy Director Pan Ning-hsin (潘寧馨) said.
“The local job market, while not spared from the impact of the economic slowdown, was somewhat unscathed,” Pan said, adding that unemployment after seasonal adjustments stood at 3.72 percent, down 0.02 percentage points from a month earlier.
For the past five years, the jobless rate has climbed 0.23 to 0.28 percentage points from June to August, owing to college graduates entering the market, Pan said.
This quarter is the peak season for companies in the electronics supply chain, as international technology brands prepare to release next-generation devices, explaining why there are 8,000 more workers in the manufacturing sector.
The total number of unemployed people rose by 12,000 to 457,000, with the number of first-time jobseekers increasing by 8,000, the agency report showed.
Corporate downsizing and closures saw 1,000 people being retrenched, while another 1,000 temporary positions came to an end, and 1,000 people quit their jobs to look for better work, the report said.
However, the working population rose 0.2 percent month-on-month to 11.51 million last month and the labor participation rate increased 0.16 percentage points to 59.28 percent, the agency said.
The number of workers in the service industry increased 14,000 from a month earlier to meet an increase in business during the summer vacation, it said.
University graduates had the highest unemployment rate at 5.51 percent, followed by high-school graduates at 3.55 percent and those with graduate degrees at 3 percent, the report said.
Unemployment was highest among people aged 20 to 24 (12.7 percent), followed by those aged 15 to 19 (9.21 percent) and those aged 25 to 29 (6.66 percent), it said.
The average unemployment period was 21.7 weeks, 0.8 weeks shorter than in June, the report said.
Taiwan’s jobless rate is higher than Hong Kong’s 2.9 percent, Singapore’s 2.2 percent and Japan’s 2.3 percent, but lower than South Korea’s 4 percent, the agency said.
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