The unemployment rate last month edged down 0.04 percentage points to 3.36 percent from a month earlier, the third consecutive month of decline, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
The figure was the second-lowest recorded for the month of November in 24 years, second only to 3.34 percent in November last year, the agency said in a report.
After seasonal adjustments, the unemployment rate rose 0.03 percentage points to 3.41 percent from August, the report showed.
Photo: CNA
The number of unemployed people last month fell by 5,000 month-on-month to 403,000, the DGBAS said, attributing the decline mainly to a lower number of people unhappy with their jobs.
The number of people employed in the domestic agricultural and services sectors fell by 2,000 each from a month earlier, but there were 1,000 more jobs in the industrial sector, it said.
Overall, the local labor market has stabilized, given the decline in the unemployment rate and the number of people who are unemployed, it added.
The stabilization of the labor market was also reflected in youth unemployment figures.
The unemployment rate among people aged 15 to 19 edged down to 7.91 percent from 9.12 percent in October; fell to 11.3 percent from 11.84 percent for people aged 20 to 24; and fell to 5.85 percent from 6.07 percent for those aged 25 to 29; but rose to 3.46 percent from 3.44 percent for those aged between 30 and 34, the report showed.
People with a university degree had the highest unemployment rate at 4.49 percent, followed by high-school graduates at 3.13 percent and graduate degree holders at 2.97 percent, the data showed.
The average unemployment period last month rose slightly to 21.1 weeks, as it took first-time jobseekers an average of 23.2 weeks to land positions, while others spent 20.5 weeks finding jobs, the report said.
The number of people who were unemployed for more than a year last month rose by 4,000 from October to 51,000 and increased by 6,000 from a year earlier, it said.
In the first 11 months of this year, the unemployment rate was 3.39 percent, down 0.1 percentage points from a year earlier, the agency said.
Census Department Deputy Director Tan Wen-ling (譚文玲) said that if economic conditions remain stable, the jobless rate is expected to fall further as this month is the traditional peak consumption season before the Lunar New Year holiday.
Elon Musk’s lieutenants have reached out to chip industry suppliers, including Applied Materials Inc, Tokyo Electron Ltd and Lam Research Corp, for his envisioned Terafab, early steps in an audacious and likely arduous attempt to break into the production of cutting-edge chips. Staff working for the joint venture between Tesla Inc and Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) have sought price quotes and delivery times for an array of chipmaking gear, people familiar with the matter said. In past weeks, they’ve contacted makers of photomasks, substrates, etchers, depositors, cleaning devices, testers and other tools, according to the people, who asked not to
JET JUICE: The war on Iran’s secondary effects have seen fuel prices skyrocket, knocking flight schedules down to earth in return as airlines struggle with costs Airline passengers should brace for more irritation in the next few months as carriers worldwide cancel flights and ground planes to cope with stratospheric increases in jet-fuel prices. Dutch flag carrier KLM is the latest company to cut its schedule, saying on Thursday that it would scrap 80 return flights at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in the coming month. That puts it in the same league as United Airlines Holdings Inc, Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, which have all pruned itineraries to mitigate costs. Global capacity for next month has been reduced by about 3 percentage points, with all
Taiwan is attracting a growing number of foreign jobseekers as companies increasingly recruit overseas talent to ease labor shortages and expand global reach, recruitment platform 104 Job Bank (104人力銀行) said yesterday. More than 40,000 foreign nationals searched for jobs in Taiwan through the platform last year, a 28 percent increase from a year earlier, the company said. Malaysians accounted for the largest share of overseas jobseekers at 12.2 percent, followed by Indonesians at 11.9 percent and Vietnamese at 10.8 percent. Indonesian applicants surged more than 50 percent year-on-year, while Vietnamese jobseekers rose by more than 30 percent. Applicants from the
NO SHORTCUTS: Asked about Elon Musk’s Terafab initiative, TSMC CEO C.C. Wei said it takes two to three years to build a fab and another one to two to ramp it up Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday raised its revenue growth forecast for this year to above 30 percent, up from the 25 percent it estimated three months earlier, citing extremely robust artificial intelligence (AI)-related chip demand. “Our customers and customers’ customers, who are mainly cloud service providers, continue to send us very positive signals and outlook,” TSMC chairman and CEO C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said at an earnings conference. The company also hiked its capital expenditure for this year toward the higher end of its forecast, or US$56 billion, as it aims to step up advanced chip capacity expansions, such as
RSS