The nation’s unemployment rate last month fell to 3.96 percent from 4.07 percent in May, ending four consecutive months of pickup, as fewer people quit or lost their jobs to business downsizing and closures, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
It was the first time in 29 years that the unemployment rate declined in the month of June, when the influx of new college graduates normally drives up unemployment.
“The decline in the jobless rate is no reason for comfort, because fewer people quit their jobs or joined the job market to avoid being labeled as unemployed,” DGBAS Deputy Director Chen Hui-hsin (陳惠欣) said.
Photo: CNA
Conservative sentiment on the part of jobseekers accounted for the decline, whereas previously, business improvement had led companies to raise staffing levels and lower the unemployment rate, the official said.
Chen declined to bet on this month’s unemployment rate, saying that it depends on whether the economy can recover faster than the entry of new graduates into the labor market.
The number of people who quit or lost jobs to downsizing dropped by 5,000, the agency’s report found, while the number of first-time jobseekers gained 6,000, lower than increases of 8,000 to 11,000 over the past five years, Chen said.
Last month’s unemployment rate is the highest for the same month in seven years and suggests an increase of 0.23 percentage points from a year earlier, Chen said.
After seasonal adjustments, the unemployment rate stood at 3.97 percent, down 0.19 percentage points from one month earlier, she said.
Still, Taiwan’s success in containing the COVID-19 outbreak allowed people to resume social gatherings and domestic trips, paving the way for a V-shaped recovery in tourism, the DGBAS said.
The total number of unemployed people fell 13,000 from May to 473,000, which signals improvement after the pandemic wiped out 74,000 jobs between February and May, Chen said.
By education level, university graduates had the highest unemployment rate at 5.43 percent, followed by high-school graduates at 3.75 percent and people with graduate degrees at 3.28 percent, the DGBAS said.
People aged 20 to 24 had the highest unemployment rate at 12.01 percent, followed by the 15-to-19 age group at 7.71 percent, the 25-to-29 age group at 6.58 percent and the 30-to-34 age group at 3.69 percent, it said.
The number of people who worked fewer than 35 hours per week fell 67,000 from a month earlier to 389,000, it said.
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