The nation’s unemployment rate last month rose slightly to 3.66 percent, as workers left their jobs and took longer than usual to find new positions, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
The latest jobless reading suggested a fractional increase of 0.01 percentage points from one month earlier, driven mainly by resignations that often occur after the Lunar New Year holiday, DGBAS Deputy Director Chen Hui-hsin (陳惠欣) said.
The unemployment rate after seasonal adjustment rose 0.03 percentage points to 3.7 percent, affirming a stable job market, the agency’s monthly report showed.
Photo: CNA
“The job market appears calm despite escalating COVID-19 cases,” Chen said, adding that hiring activity is gaining momentum, although the agency would pay close attention for possible changes.
There are usually about 2,000 job resignations after the Lunar New Year holiday, but the number reached 6,000 last month, Chen said, likely because it took jobseekers longer to find new work.
The unemployment rate should decline soon given that the economy is healthy and it should not take long for recently resigned workers to find new jobs, Chen said.
The Cabinet on Sunday said it would extend COVID-19 relief programs to June next year.
The total jobless population reached 435,000 after the 6,000 newly jobless were added to the figure, and 1,000 positions were filled by first-time jobseekers were subtracted, the report said.
Job losses due to downsizing or closures reversed by 7,000 as health authorities loosened quarantine requirements and business restrictions.
The average unemployment period was 21 weeks, shortened by about 1 week from one month earlier, it said.
Unemployment periods for first-time jobseekers shed 6.6 weeks to 22.3 weeks.
University graduates faced the highest unemployment rate at 5.25 percent, followed by high-school graduates at 3.32 percent and people with graduate degrees at 2.81 percent, the DGBAS said.
Junior college graduates had an unemployment rate of 2.64 percent and people with junior-high school or lower education had the lowest jobless rate at 2.58 percent.
People aged 20 to 24 had the highest unemployment rate at 12.48 percent, followed by the 15-to-19 age bracket at 8.47 percent, the 25-to-29 age group at 6.19 percent and the 30-to-34 age group at 3.5 percent, it said.
People aged 35 to 39 had jobless rates of 2.91 percent and people aged 45 to 64 had the lowest unemployment rate at 2.23 percent.
Taiwan’s unemployment rate is lower than Hong Kong’s 4.2 percent, but higher than South Korea’s 3 percent and Japan’s 2.6 percent, government data showed.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
Clambering hand-over-hand, sweat dripping into his eyes, a durian laborer expertly slices a cumbersome fruit from a tree before tossing it down to land with a soft thump in his colleague’s waiting arms about 15m below. Among Thailand’s most famous and lucrative exports, the pungent “king of fruits” is as distinctive in its smell as its spiky green-brown carapace, and has been farmed in the kingdom for hundreds of years. However, a vicious heat wave engulfing Southeast Asia has resulted in smaller yields and spiraling costs, with growers and sellers increasingly panicked as global warming damages the industry. “This year is a crisis,”
HIGH-TECH: As leading-edge process technologies become more complicated, only a handful of players are able to provide design services, the company’s CEO said Artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯) yesterday said that revenue would grow significantly again in 2026 after adding a major AI chip customer, reversing moderation amid a product transition next year. The Taipei-based application-specific IC (ASIC) designer reiterated its strong revenue growth forecast for this year and 2026 after its stock plummeted about 23 percent to NT$3,145 from a peak of NT$4,085 on March 6 amid growing competition. Alchip said it has built strong partnerships with cloud service providers (CSP), denying that it had lost orders to smaller competitors such as Faraday Technology Corp (智原). Faraday said it has secured