The number of employees in the industrial and service sectors in July increased 0.55 percent from the previous month, as the job market began to recover from a local COVID-19 outbreak that was subsiding amid disease-prevention measures, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
The latest tally suggested a gain of 44,000 people, which lifts the number of employees to 8.06 million. Manufacturing sectors raised the number of workers by 15,000, hotels and restaurants by 12,000, and retailers and wholesale operators by 7,000, the statistics agency said.
That reversed two months of decline during a nationwide level 3 COVID-19 alert. Authorities on July 27 lowered the alert to level 2, which allowed movie theaters, theme parks, museums and fitness facilities to resume operations, and restaurants to allow dine-in services at reduced capacity.
Photo: Liao Cheng-hui, Taipei Times
“The job market started to see the effect of conditional opening and continued to heal in the absence of major cluster infections,” DGBAS Deputy Director Chen Hui-hsin (陳惠欣) told a news conference in Taipei.
As a result, the accession rate — the number of new employees added to payrolls — rose 1.07 percentage points to 2.81 percent, while the exit rate fell 0.66 points to 2.26 percent, the agency’s monthly report found.
The improvement gathered further steam in August, thanks to families taking advantage of the summer vacation before the school year began this month, Chen said.
The conditional opening also had a positive effect on working hours, Chen said, adding that the entertainment and leisure sectors reported the biggest increase of 23.3 hours, followed by 10.3 hours among retail and wholesale operators, and 6.4 hours among restaurants and hotels.
The level 3 alert required closures of fitness, entertainment and other recreational facilities.
Additionally, average monthly take-home pay rose a mild 0.74 percent to NT$42,923 (US$1,548) in July, while monthly wages including overtime and commission-based income advanced 8.84 percent to NT$55,757, the report said.
The figures indicate gains of 1.28 percent and 1.3 percent respectively from a year earlier, it said.
The recovery in take-home pay was most obvious among restaurants and hotels at 3.75 percent, Chen said.
In terms of total compensation, workers at electronics makers, electricity suppliers and logistics service providers reported gains of 80.29 percent, 45.39 percent and 31.25 percent respectively from one month earlier on the back of mid-year bonuses, among other benefits, it said.
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