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.
CHIP WAR: Tariffs on Taiwanese chips would prompt companies to move their factories, but not necessarily to the US, unleashing a ‘global cross-sector tariff war’ US President Donald Trump would “shoot himself in the foot” if he follows through on his recent pledge to impose higher tariffs on Taiwanese and other foreign semiconductors entering the US, analysts said. Trump’s plans to raise tariffs on chips manufactured in Taiwan to as high as 100 percent would backfire, macroeconomist Henry Wu (吳嘉隆) said. He would “shoot himself in the foot,” Wu said on Saturday, as such economic measures would lead Taiwanese chip suppliers to pass on additional costs to their US clients and consumers, and ultimately cause another wave of inflation. Trump has claimed that Taiwan took up to
A start-up in Mexico is trying to help get a handle on one coastal city’s plastic waste problem by converting it into gasoline, diesel and other fuels. With less than 10 percent of the world’s plastics being recycled, Petgas’ idea is that rather than letting discarded plastic become waste, it can become productive again as fuel. Petgas developed a machine in the port city of Boca del Rio that uses pyrolysis, a thermodynamic process that heats plastics in the absence of oxygen, breaking it down to produce gasoline, diesel, kerosene, paraffin and coke. Petgas chief technology officer Carlos Parraguirre Diaz said that in
Japan intends to closely monitor the impact on its currency of US President Donald Trump’s new tariffs and is worried about the international fallout from the trade imposts, Japanese Minister of Finance Katsunobu Kato said. “We need to carefully see how the exchange rate and other factors will be affected and what form US monetary policy will take in the future,” Kato said yesterday in an interview with Fuji Television. Japan is very concerned about how the tariffs might impact the global economy, he added. Kato spoke as nations and firms brace for potential repercussions after Trump unleashed the first salvo of
SUPPORT: The government said it would help firms deal with supply disruptions, after Trump signed orders imposing tariffs of 25 percent on imports from Canada and Mexico The government pledged to help companies with operations in Mexico, such as iPhone assembler Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), shift production lines and investment if needed to deal with higher US tariffs. The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday announced measures to help local firms cope with the US tariff increases on Canada, Mexico, China and other potential areas. The ministry said that it would establish an investment and trade service center in the US to help Taiwanese firms assess the investment environment in different US states, plan supply chain relocation strategies and
RSS