The nation’s unemployment rate last month gained 0.03 percentage points to 3.53 percent, as more people quit or lost jobs due to the termination of seasonal and temporary hiring, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
The uptick is due to seasonal factors that are to abate this month, DGBAS Census Department Deputy Director Chen Hui-hsin (陳惠欣) said.
“Taiwan’s job market remains stable, as evidenced by the decline in the unemployment rate after seasonal adjustments to 3.58 percent,” Chen said, adding that the reading is lower than the 3.6 percent in January.
It is common for workers to change jobs after the Lunar New Year holiday, Chen said, adding that the termination of seasonal or temporary hiring increased the number of people without jobs.
As a result, the number of unemployed people increased by 4,000 to 420,000 last month, as people who quit grew by 5,000 and discharged seasonal staffers contributed another 2,000, Chen said.
Retailers and restaurants usually hire temporary workers to meet seasonal increases in business demand over the Lunar New Year holiday that this year fell entirely in January.
Compared with a year earlier, the unemployment rate dropped 0.12 percentage points, as service sectors emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic and helped consolidate market stability, Chen said.
However, the number of people who work less than 35 hours per week rose by 23,000 to 185,000, as exporters took a hit from a global economic slowdown and cut back on working hours or furloughed some staff, Chen said, adding the DGBAS would closely monitor the situation.
The unemployment period averaged 23.1 weeks, 1.4 weeks longer than a month earlier, with the period stretching to 28.5 weeks for first-time jobseekers, the statistics agency said.
The number of people unemployed for one year or longer increased by 6,000 to 59,000, it said.
By demographic breakdown, people aged 20 to 24 had the highest unemployment rate of 11.8 percent, followed by the 15 to 19 age group at 8.35 percent, the 25 to 29 age group at 6.08 percent and the 30 to 34 age bracket at 3.69 percent, it said.
People with university degrees had the highest unemployment rate of 4.95 percent, followed by those with high-school diplomas at 3.24 percent and people with graduate degrees at 2.64 percent, it said.
People with junior college degrees had an unemployment rate of 2.56 percent, higher than the 2.47 percent of those with junior-high school educations, it said.
Taiwan’s unemployment rate is higher than South Korea’s and Hong Kong’s 3.1 percent and Japan’s 2.4 percent, but lower than those of countries such as the US and Canada with 3.9 percent and 5.3 percent respectively.
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