About 79 percent of Taiwanese are not optimistic about the employment prospects of recent graduates, a survey released yesterday by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)-affiliated National Policy Foundation showed.
In the survey, 36.5 percent of respondents said they were “very pessimistic” about the employment prospects of this year’s graduates, while 42.7 percent said they were “not very optimistic.”
Another 11.7 percent of respondents were “fairly optimistic” and 1.9 percent were “very optimistic” about the employment prospects of this year’s graduates, while 7.1 percent gave no response, the survey showed.
To encourage youth employment, the Ministry of Labor has launched a Youth Employment Incentive Program that would give recent graduates who have worked for three months a reward of up to NT$30,000, the foundation said.
Despite the program’s benefits, the survey showed that 87.7 percent of respondents did not understand the program, the foundation said.
Foundation representative Chien Jung-tsung (簡榮宗) at a news conference in Taipei questioned the effectiveness of the government’s efforts to promote and execute the program.
In the post-COVID-19 pandemic era, the employment environment has become different from what people are accustomed to, he said.
As employers downsize, outsourcing and part-time jobs have become common, he said.
About 984,000 employees worked less than 35 hours per week in June, according to statistics released on July 22 by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics.
Due to the impact of the pandemic, many companies are not hiring new workers and have become conservative in their recruitment decisions, Chien said.
Meanwhile, there has been an emergence of new types of work, he said, adding that amid the pandemic, e-commerce and other “zero-contact” businesses have become widespread.
“The traditional labor market is different from what we imagined,” he said.
In light of the circumstances, the foundation urges the government to enact legislation to protect the rights of workers in non-standard forms of employment, he said.
The government should also continue to offer loan schemes designed for young entrepreneurs, he added.
Vocational training programs should include digital skills to meet the demands of the job market, he said.
The Employment Insurance Act (就業保險法) should be amended to allow young people with less than one year of job experience to apply for unemployment benefits, he added.
The government should provide a jobseekers’ allowance to recent graduates to help young people get through this period, KMT Taipei City Councilor Hsu Chiao-hsin (徐巧芯) said.
The survey was conducted by telephone from July 20 to 22 with 1,069 people aged 20 or older, the foundation said.
It has a confidence level of 95 percent and a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
Additional reporting by CNA
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