The unemployment rate last month dropped to 3.68 percent, falling for the fifth straight month, as fewer people quit or lost their jobs due to business downsizing or closures, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
The latest data showed a decline of 0.07 percentage points from a month earlier as the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic continued to subside, although it has not yet disappeared, the DGBAS said.
“The job market in Taiwan is quite stable, compared with that in other countries in terms of unemployment and labor participation rates,” DGBAS Deputy Director Chen Hui-hsin (陳惠欣) told a media briefing.
Photo: CNA
The labor participation rate softened from a month earlier to 59.14 percent, the data showed.
The jobless reading after seasonal adjustments was 3.76 percent, shrinking 0.01 percentage points from November last year, affirming a stable job market, according to the agency’s monthly report.
The jobless population contracted by about 9,000 people to 440,000 last month as the number of people who lost jobs due to business downsizing or closures dropped by about 4,000, the agency said.
First-time jobseekers declined at a comparable pace, while people who quit decreased by about 1,000, it said.
For the whole of last year, the jobless rate averaged 3.85 percent, gaining 0.12 percentage points from 2019, it said.
Chen blamed the COVID-19 situation for last year’s data, as it diminished consumer activity in the first quarter, pushing the unemployment rate to 4.07 percent in May last year.
The situation started to improve after July, thanks to a boom in domestic tourism and the government’s Triple Stimulus Voucher program after infections were brought under control in Taiwan, she said.
People with university degrees had the highest unemployment rate at 5.48 percent last year, followed by high-school graduates at 3.56 percent and people with graduate degrees at 3.1 percent, the report showed.
People with a junior college education had the lowest unemployment rate at 2.78 percent, followed by people with a junior-high school education at 2.85 percent, it said.
People aged 20 to 24 had the highest unemployment rate at 12.06 percent, followed by the 15-to-19 bracket at 8.18 percent, the 25-to-29 group at 6.5 percent and the 30-to-34 bracket at 3.67 percent, it said.
People aged 45 to 64 had the lowest unemployment rate of 2.3 percent, it said.
There were 4,000 jobs added last year, the poorest performance since the global financial crisis in 2008-2009, Chen said, adding that the pandemic poses continued uncertainty for this year.
Intel Corp chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) is expected to meet with Taiwanese suppliers next month in conjunction with the opening of the Computex Taipei trade show, supply chain sources said on Monday. The visit, the first for Tan to Taiwan since assuming his new post last month, would be aimed at enhancing Intel’s ties with suppliers in Taiwan as he attempts to help turn around the struggling US chipmaker, the sources said. Tan is to hold a banquet to celebrate Intel’s 40-year presence in Taiwan before Computex opens on May 20 and invite dozens of Taiwanese suppliers to exchange views
Application-specific integrated circuit designer Faraday Technology Corp (智原) yesterday said that although revenue this quarter would decline 30 percent from last quarter, it retained its full-year forecast of revenue growth of 100 percent. The company attributed the quarterly drop to a slowdown in customers’ production of chips using Faraday’s advanced packaging technology. The company is still confident about its revenue growth this year, given its strong “design-win” — or the projects it won to help customers design their chips, Faraday president Steve Wang (王國雍) told an online earnings conference. “The design-win this year is better than we expected. We believe we will win
Chizuko Kimura has become the first female sushi chef in the world to win a Michelin star, fulfilling a promise she made to her dying husband to continue his legacy. The 54-year-old Japanese chef regained the Michelin star her late husband, Shunei Kimura, won three years ago for their Sushi Shunei restaurant in Paris. For Shunei Kimura, the star was a dream come true. However, the joy was short-lived. He died from cancer just three months later in June 2022. He was 65. The following year, the restaurant in the heart of Montmartre lost its star rating. Chizuko Kimura insisted that the new star is still down
While China’s leaders use their economic and political might to fight US President Donald Trump’s trade war “to the end,” its army of social media soldiers are embarking on a more humorous campaign online. Trump’s tariff blitz has seen Washington and Beijing impose eye-watering duties on imports from the other, fanning a standoff between the economic superpowers that has sparked global recession fears and sent markets into a tailspin. Trump says his policy is a response to years of being “ripped off” by other countries and aims to bring manufacturing to the US, forcing companies to employ US workers. However, China’s online warriors
RSS