Taiwan’s labor market remained resilient last month, despite the unemployment rate inching up for a second straight month to 3.35 percent, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
The latest report indicated a slight rise of 0.01 percentage points from February, but was still the lowest for the same month in 25 years, affirming a stable job market, the agency said.
The seasonally adjusted figure was 3.36 percent for last month, also up 0.01 percentage points from the previous month, it said.
Photo: CNA
Typically, unemployment numbers fall for March, as the economy starts to gather momentum following the Lunar New Year holiday.
However, the post-holiday boost was muted this year, which Census Department Deputy Director Tan Wen-ling (譚文玲) attributed to extended job-switching activity.
A surge of workers, about 3,000 people, quit their jobs due to dissatisfaction, and many are still in transition, Tan told a news conference in Taipei.
“This year, the post-holiday job changes have dragged on longer than usual,” she said. “Some people who left their previous jobs have not yet landed new ones.”
In total, 403,000 people were unemployed last month, up 1,000 from the previous month, the DGBAS said.
Although the number of workers quitting rose, the number of first-time job seekers fell by about 2,000, suggesting that fresh entrants to the labor market are finding opportunities relatively quickly.
The youngest workers, as usual, faced the steepest challenges.
The unemployment rate for those aged 20 to 24 stood at a high of 11.35 percent, reflecting the difficulties that often accompany the early stages of a person’s career, the agency said.
People aged 15 to 19 posted an 8.32 percent unemployment rate, while those aged 25 to 29 had a jobless rate of 5.73 percent.
The rate dropped further to 3.43 percent for people in their early 30s, it said.
By education breakdown, university graduates had the highest unemployment rate at 4.52 percent, followed by high-school and vocational-school graduates at 3.13 percent, and those with postgraduate degrees at 2.87 percent, the agency said.
The average period of unemployment shortened slightly to 19.6 weeks, with first-time job seekers spending an average of 21.3 weeks before landing a job, the DGBAS said.
Long-term unemployment — defined as being out of work for more than a year — affected 43,000 people, a decrease from both the previous month and the same time last year, it said.
Looking ahead, uncertainty remains high, Tan said.
Any potential fallout for Taiwan’s workforce from US President Donald Trump’s tariff policy would likely start appearing in the second half of this year, following a 90-day delay on the US implementation of a 32 percent tariff on Taiwan, she said.
The US levy has not yet made a dent on Taiwan’s job market, she added.
When Lika Megreladze was a child, life in her native western Georgian region of Guria revolved around tea. Her mother worked for decades as a scientist at the Soviet Union’s Institute of Tea and Subtropical Crops in the village of Anaseuli, Georgia, perfecting cultivation methods for a Georgian tea industry that supplied the bulk of the vast communist state’s brews. “When I was a child, this was only my mum’s workplace. Only later I realized that it was something big,” she said. Now, the institute lies abandoned. Yellowed papers are strewn around its decaying corridors, and a statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin
UNCERTAINTIES: Exports surged 34.1% and private investment grew 7.03% to outpace expectations in the first half, although US tariffs could stall momentum The Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) yesterday raised its GDP growth forecast to 3.05 percent this year on a robust first-half performance, but warned that US tariff threats and external uncertainty could stall momentum in the second half of the year. “The first half proved exceptionally strong, allowing room for optimism,” CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said. “But the growth momentum may slow moving forward due to US tariffs.” The tariff threat poses definite downside risks, although the scale of the impact remains unclear given the unpredictability of US President Donald Trump’s policies, Lien said. Despite the headwinds, Taiwan is likely
UNIFYING OPPOSITION: Numerous companies have registered complaints over the potential levies, bringing together rival automakers in voicing their reservations US President Donald Trump is readying plans for industry-specific tariffs to kick in alongside his country-by-country duties in two weeks, ramping up his push to reshape the US’ standing in the global trading system by penalizing purchases from abroad. Administration officials could release details of Trump’s planned 50 percent duty on copper in the days before they are set to take effect on Friday next week, a person familiar with the matter said. That is the same date Trump’s “reciprocal” levies on products from more than 100 nations are slated to begin. Trump on Tuesday said that he is likely to impose tariffs
HELPING HAND: Approving the sale of H20s could give China the edge it needs to capture market share and become the global standard, a US representative said The US President Donald Trump administration’s decision allowing Nvidia Corp to resume shipments of its H20 artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China risks bolstering Beijing’s military capabilities and expanding its capacity to compete with the US, the head of the US House Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party said. “The H20, which is a cost-effective and powerful AI inference chip, far surpasses China’s indigenous capability and would therefore provide a substantial increase to China’s AI development,” committee chairman John Moolenaar, a Michigan Republican, said on Friday in a letter to US Secretary of
RSS