The unemployment rate climbed to 4.03 percent last month as the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic began to bite, surpassing 4 percent for the first time in the past 42 months, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
Last month’s figure is the highest for April in the past seven years, DGBAS data showed.
The jobless rate expanded for the third consecutive month after posting 3.64 percent, 3.7 percent and 3.72 percent respectively in the first three months of this year, DGBAS senior executive officer Chen Hui-hsin (陳惠欣) told a media briefing.
Photo: CNA
The gauge accelerated last month with a monthly gain of 0.31 percent, the highest for a single month in the past 11 years, as more firms in the service sector, hurt by the outbreak, dismissed employees while cutting back on operations or shutting down, Chen said.
The number of unemployed people last month was 481,000, an increase of 36,000 from a month earlier, mostly due to business downsizing and factory closures, the DGBAS said.
The number of employed people fell to 11.46 million, down 46,000 from March, with a decline of 34,000 in the service industry, 9,000 in the manufacturing industry and 3,000 in the agriculture industry, the data showed.
Among service industries, tourism and dining lost 10,000 employees from March, customer service workers fell by 4,000, entertainment and recreation decreased 3,000, finance lost 2,000 and transportation dropped 1,000, the DGBAS data showed.
The healthcare and real-estate industries bucked the trend, each gaining 1,000 employees from a month earlier, the data showed.
After seasonal adjustments, the jobless rate rose 4.1 percent, the biggest rise since January 2014, Chen said.
The number of people whose work hours decreased rose, suggesting that local companies are contracting operations to cope with declining business, the DGBAS said.
The number of people working fewer than 35 hours per week surged to 400,000 last month, increasing 139,000 from 261,000 in March, Chen said.
The gauge usually predicts joblessness, as firms usually reduce working hours before resorting to layoffs when a situation fails to improve, the agency said.
The rise in the unemployment rate last month was not surprising, as the DGBAS forecast that the pandemic would continue to dampen economic activity after more than 400 people in Taiwan were infected, Chen said.
The agency expects the gauge to improve this month, given that the outbreak is diminishing domestically and private consumption is gradually recovering, although the situation in other nations would still affect the local economy, Chen said.
Taiwan’s unemployment rate is lower than the US’ 14.7 percent, Canada’s 13 percent, Hong Kong’s 5.2 percent, but higher than South Korea’s 3.8 percent and Japan’s 2.5 percent, the data showed.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”