The unemployment rate last month dropped to 3.64 percent, the lowest for April in three years, as fewer people lost their jobs amid a stable economy, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
“The latest figure represented a new low for the past three years, suggesting a stable job market,” DGBAS Deputy Director Pan Ning-hsin (潘寧馨) told a media briefing.
The seasonal jobless rate stood at 3.69 percent, up 0.02 percentage points from one month earlier, the agency said in a report.
Pan attributed the slight uptick to an isolated incident, rather than a sign of an economic downturn.
The jobless rate for the first four months of this year fell to 3.66 percent, the lowest level in 18 years, lending support to continued economic improvement, which explained the addition of 3,000 jobs last month, he said.
The number of unemployed people declined 2,000 to 431,000, with first-time jobseekers decreasing by 1,000 and the number of people who lost their jobs due to downsizing and seasonal hiring each falling 1,000, the report said.
The number of people who quit their jobs also dropped by 1,000, it said.
Firms in the service sector added 5,000 workers to their payrolls, but companies in the industrial and agricultural sectors cut 2,000 and 1,000 jobs respectively, it added.
Unemployment might edge up from this month to August due to the arrival of graduation season and an increase in part-time jobseekers during the summer, the report said.
University graduates had the highest unemployment at 5 percent, followed by high-school graduates at 3.55 percent and those with graduate degrees at 2.85 percent, it said.
Unemployment was highest among people aged 20 to 24 at 11.69 percent, followed by those aged 15 to 19 at 8.49 percent and those aged 25 to 29 at 6.39 percent, it added.
The unemployment period last month averaged 23.9 weeks, 0.4 weeks longer than one month earlier, the report said.
First-time jobseekers had greater difficulty securing jobs, with their unemployment lasting an average of 30.8 weeks, 0.3 weeks longer than one month earlier, it said.
Taiwan’s unemployment is higher than trade rivals.
The jobless rate in Hong Kong is 2.8 percent and it is 2 percent in Singapore.
South Korea has a jobless rate of 4 percent, while the US has an unemployment rate of 3.9 percent and Japan has 2.5 percent.
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