Taiwan’s youth unemployment rate hit 13 percent in July last year, the second-highest monthly youth unemployment rate in East Asia that year, behind only Hong Kong’s 15.1 percent recorded in June, according to a report released by the International Labour Organization (ILO) this week.
In the Global Employment Trends 2013 report released on Tuesday, the ILO, the employment watchdog of the UN, showed that Taiwan’s youth unemployment rate for the 15 to 24 age group in July last year was much higher than the 9.6 percent registered by its economic rival South Korea in the same month.
The ILO’s figure showed youth unemployment in Taiwan was much worse than the overall jobless situation in the country. According to the statistics compiled by the government, the overall jobless rate in July last year stood at 4.25 percent.
For last year as a whole, the overall unemployment rate stood at 4.24 percent, down 0.15 percentage points from a year earlier and the closest it has been to 4 percent since 2008, when the country’s jobless rate was 4.14 percent.
As for the economy in East Asia, the ILO said it was affected by various unfavorable global factors, including the lingering debt problems in the eurozone, which pushed up youth unemployment last year by 0.3 percentage points to 9.5 percent.
More young men in East Asia were unemployed than young women.
The report showed the jobless rate among male youth in East Asia last year reached 11.2 percent, while unemployment for female youth in the region was 7.6 percent.
For East Asia as a whole, youth unemployment was also more severe than overall unemployment. The rate of unemployed youth was 2.7 times that of older people.
In addition to the unsatisfactory employment data for youth in East Asia, the ILO said the overall job market conditions in the region were disappointing, adding that employment in the region for last year rose only 0.5 percentage points, or about 4.5 million people, from a year earlier.
Before the global financial crisis broke out, employment had risen 1.2 percentage points annually from 2002 to 2007, the report said.
Employment in Macau in the middle of last year rose 4.9 percentage points from the the same period of 2011, compared with an increase of 2.7 percentage points in Hong Kong, a rise of 1.9 percentage points in South Korea and an increase of 1.2 percentage points in Taiwan.
The report said employment growth in Taiwan and South Korea from last year to next year is expected to range between 0.5 percentage points and 1 percentage point.
A study published by online booking platform Expedia revealed searches for travel to Taipei have ballooned 2,786 percent following the lifting of COVID-19 pandemic travel restrictions due to the city being a “designation dupe” for Seoul. The TikTok trend for duping — referring to substituting a designation for a more inexpensive alternative — helped propel interest in Taipei, it said in a consumer survey titled “Unpack ‘24,” which was conducted from September to October in 14 countries. Location dupes are “every bit as delightful as the tried-and-true places travelers love,” Expedia trend tracker Melanie Fish said of the year’s popular alternatives, which
SAFETY IN REGULATION: The proposal states that Chiayi should assess whether it is viable to establish such a district and draft rules to protect clients and sex workers The Chiayi City Council passed a motion yesterday to assess the viability of establishing a regulated red-light district. The council yesterday held its last session of the year, at which its fiscal 2024 budget was approved, along with 61 other proposals. The proposal to assess the viability of establishing a red-light district was put forward by independent Chiayi City Councilor Molly Yen (顏色不分藍綠支持性專區顏色田慎節). The proposal cited 2011 amendments to the Social Order Maintenance Act (社會秩序維護法), which stipulate that city and county governments can pass autonomous regulations on the sex trade to manage the industry and guarantee industry workers’ rights. A ban on the
CHINA illness surge: Of 88 travelers from China, Hong Kong and Macau with respiratory symptoms who were encouraged to get tested upon arrival, 70.6% had the flu Two hundred and sixty people with COVID-19 were hospitalized and 31 deaths related to the virus were reported last week — the highest numbers in four weeks, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday, adding that cases are expected to peak next month. CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Director Guo Hung-wei (郭宏偉) said that of the 260 people hospitalized last week with moderate to severe COVID-19, 98 percent had not received the Omicron XBB.1.5-adapted COVID-19 vaccine. Among the people hospitalized this year, 78 percent were aged 65 or older, while most of the those who were hospitalized or died have or had
A small-scale protest that called on the government to cancel its plan to welcome Indian migrant workers in a bid to tackle Taiwan’s labor shortage was held in Taipei yesterday. During the protest, comprised of a few dozen people staged in front of the Presidential Office on Ketagalan Boulevard, the protest’s chief initiator, a woman identified only as “Yuna” said they wanted the central government to reconsider allowing migrant workers from India to enter Taiwan. Most people in Taiwan had little knowledge about the potential plan to allow in Indian migrant workers until a report in the media last month, she