The Lunar New Year is just around the corner, which means it is time for ritual online polls about the overwhelming number of Taiwanese planning to look for new jobs after the holiday.
Such polls have become as much a holiday tradition as shopping for snacks and candies along Taipei’s Dihua Street and purchasing spring couplets.
Online job bank yes123 on Monday said that 90.7 percent of the 1,204 full-time workers who responded to its annual poll plan to look for a new job, the most since it launched the survey 11 years ago.
The figure might sound alarming, even discounting the reliability of self-selected poll respondents, ensuring headlines about “record” or “staggering” numbers of people seeking new jobs — at least until the results of previous polls are considered.
Last year’s yes123 poll found that 88.9 percent of respondents planned to find a new job, compared with 87.1 percent in 2016, 78.6 percent in 2015, 71.3 percent in 2014 and 90.3 percent in 2010.
Similar polls by other online agencies have echoed these numbers, with 1111 Job Bank’s 2016 poll finding that 86 percent of office workers wanted to change jobs, compared with 94 percent in 2015 and 66 percent in 2011.
Yes123 also said that 84.6 percent of this year’s respondents want to work abroad to earn more money, again a disturbingly high number until looking at previous surveys: 1111 Job Bank in May last year found that 88 percent of respondents would consider working overseas, yes123 in January 2016 found that 78 percent wanted to do so and a Cheers magazine poll in 2013 found that 74.2 percent of Taiwanese born between 1991 and 2000 were interested in working overseas.
The period after the Lunar New Year holiday has long been a popular time for employed Taiwanese to job-hunt, as they want to ensure they receive the traditional year-end holiday bonus before starting a new job.
It should come as no surprise that poll respondents have said that they want to find a job with higher pay, better benefits and opportunities for advancement. These desires usually hold true for employed jobseekers regardless of the time of year in which they send out resumes.
However, this year’s poll numbers from yes123 are likely to be played up, given the installation this week of a revamped Cabinet, which has committed to meeting President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) priorities of promoting “the livelihood of the people, protection of democracy and defense of the nation’s sovereignty.”
While the nation’s unemployment rate has been declining — averaging 3.76 percent last year and in 2017, down from 3.92 percent in 2016 and 4.28 percent in 2012 — real wages over the past decade have struggled to keep pace with those of Taiwan’s “Asian Tiger” peers and there are few signs of improvement, regardless of what promises officials or politicians make, especially given escalating trade tensions between the US and China.
If online job banks really want to provide useful data, they should conduct follow-up polls of their survey respondents to find out just how many actually changed jobs after the Lunar New Year. Until then, their annual pre-holiday polling should be considered little more than public relations stunts.
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