The unemployment rate edged up to 3.72 percent last month, ending six months of decreases, as companies in the service sector cut temporary positions after the Lunar New Year holiday, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
The latest jobless figure, while gaining 0.03 percentage point from February, is the lowest in 15 years when compared with the same month of the year, DGBAS Deputy Director Lo Yi-ling (羅怡玲) said.
The statistics official attributed the stable job market to an improving economy at home and abroad, which helped boost domestic wages to a record high in the first two months of the year.
“The jobless rate rose slightly [last month] due to the losses of temporary jobs after the Lunar New Year holiday,” Lo said, adding that some workers quit jobs to search of better ones after obtaining bonuses at the end of the lunar year.
The unemployment rate after seasonal adjustments stood at 3.75 percent last month, also higher than 3.74 percent recorded a month earlier, the DGBAS report showed.
The figures suggested a jobless population of about 431,000 last month, an increase of 3,000 from February, the report said.
The number of people who quit jobs increased by 3,000 last month, while people who lost their jobs due to business closures or seasonal factors increased by 3,000, the report said.
However, first-time job seekers dropped by 3,000 last month, thanks to a growing job pool, the report said.
The service sector hired an extra 93,000 workers, while industrial sectors added 34,000 last month, from a year earlier, the report said.
Unemployment was highest among people with a university degree or higher at 4.71 percent, followed by college graduates at 4.04 percent and high-school graduates at 3.78 percent, the report said.
By age, the 15-to-24 group had the highest unemployment rate at 11.58 percent, compared with 3.91 percent for the 25-to-44 group and 1.99 percent for the 45-to-64 bracket, the report said.
The job market might remain stable going forward, as 1111 Job Bank (1111人力銀行) reported 48,000 job openings last month, the highest in 16 years, the company said in statement.
Regular monthly wages averaged NT$38,148 in February, down 1.03 percent from January, but up 1.64 percent from a year earlier, the DGBAS said in a separate report.
Non-regular monthly wages stood at NT$86,666 in February, more than double the level in the prior year, as improved earnings allowed firms to provide better bonuses to employees, the statistics agency said.
Stripping holiday distortions, regular monthly wages picked up 1.62 percent year-on-year to a record high of NT$38,347 for the first two months, DGBAS data showed, adding that the wage increase would hit 2.2 percent after factoring in inflation.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) would not produce its most advanced technologies in the US next year, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. Kuo made the comment during an appearance at the legislature, hours after the chipmaker announced that it would invest an additional US$100 billion to expand its manufacturing operations in the US. Asked by Taiwan People’s Party Legislator-at-large Chang Chi-kai (張啟楷) if TSMC would allow its most advanced technologies, the yet-to-be-released 2-nanometer and 1.6-nanometer processes, to go to the US in the near term, Kuo denied it. TSMC recently opened its first US factory, which produces 4-nanometer
GREAT SUCCESS: Republican Senator Todd Young expressed surprise at Trump’s comments and said he expects the administration to keep the program running US lawmakers who helped secure billions of dollars in subsidies for domestic semiconductor manufacturing rejected US President Donald Trump’s call to revoke the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, signaling that any repeal effort in the US Congress would fall short. US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who negotiated the law, on Wednesday said that Trump’s demand would fail, while a top Republican proponent, US Senator Todd Young, expressed surprise at the president’s comments and said he expects the administration to keep the program running. The CHIPS Act is “essential for America leading the world in tech, leading the world in AI [artificial
REACTIONS: While most analysts were positive about TSMC’s investment, one said the US expansion could disrupt the company’s supply-demand balance Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) new US$100 billion investment in the US would exert a positive effect on the chipmaker’s revenue in the medium term on the back of booming artificial intelligence (AI) chip demand from US chip designers, an International Data Corp (IDC) analyst said yesterday. “This is good for TSMC in terms of business expansion, as its major clients for advanced chips are US chip designers,” IDC senior semiconductor research manager Galen Zeng (曾冠瑋) said by telephone yesterday. “Besides, those US companies all consider supply chain resilience a business imperative,” Zeng said. That meant local supply would
Servers that might contain artificial intelligence (AI)-powering Nvidia Corp chips shipped from the US to Singapore ended up in Malaysia, but their actual final destination remains a mystery, Singaporean Minister for Home Affairs and Law K Shanmugam said yesterday. The US is cracking down on exports of advanced semiconductors to China, seeking to retain a competitive edge over the technology. However, Bloomberg News reported in late January that US officials were probing whether Chinese AI firm DeepSeek (深度求索) bought advanced Nvidia semiconductors through third parties in Singapore, skirting Washington’s restrictions. Shanmugam said the route of the chips emerged in the course of an
RSS