The number of workers on official furlough programs rose by more than 500 over the past week as more export-oriented manufacturers introduced unpaid leave programs due to declining orders amid weakening global demand, the Ministry of Labor said yesterday.
The number of workers on furlough climbed from 17,646 on Thursday last week to 18,163, the ministry said.
The manufacturing sector saw a surge in the number of furloughed workers over the past week, Department of Labor Standards and Equal Employment Director Huang Wei-chen (黃維琛) said.
Photo: CNA
One manufacturer in the metal electromechanical component industry placed about 50 workers on unpaid leave over the past week, while one in the textile sector reported another 60 furloughed workers due to a decline in global orders, Huang said.
The number of furloughed workers in the support services industry, which is largely composed of travel agencies, increased by 246 to 7,772 in the week, he said.
However, most employers in the support services industry said they plan to end their furlough programs by the end of this year following the government’s announcement that it would remove the weekly cap on the number of visitors from abroad on Saturday next week and ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday, Huang said.
A major downturn in the number of furloughed workers is expected next month as domestic demand recovers, he added.
The latest data on furloughed workers come as activity in Taiwan’s manufacturing sector remained sluggish for the eighth consecutive month in October, as political and economic uncertainties continued to dent global demand, the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER, 台灣經濟研究院) said on Wednesday.
The institute said that its composite index for the local manufacturing sector rose by 0.17 points compared with September to 0.97.
This performance put it in the “yellow-blue” range on TIER’s five-tier scale, under which “red” indicates overheating, “yellow-red” fast growth, “green” stable growth, “yellow-blue” sluggish growth and “blue” contraction.
The institute said that a weak New Taiwan dollar, and persistent demand for automobile chips and high-performance computing systems had not fully offset the impact of foreign customers canceling or postponing orders due to changed production plans.
This led to local businesses adjusting their investment and expenditure plans, with Taiwan’s industrial production index, outbound shipments and export orders all declining in October for a second straight month as a result, the Taipei-based institute said.
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