About 88 percent of soon-to-be college graduates are worried about the job opportunities they will encounter when they finish school in June, a local job bank said yesterday.
As employers battle declining business and refrain from hiring new recruits, 86 percent of students taking college majors traditionally considered recession-proof, such engineering, indicated that they felt stress and pessimism, compared to 67 percent just three months ago, the 1111 Job Bank said.
“Sixty-three percent of graduates from last year [2008] are still unemployed. Add that number to the mass exodus of new graduates this year and you get the idea,” said Ryan Wu (吳睿穎), chief operating officer of 1111 Job Bank.
While entry-level job seekers said they would be willing to lower their monthly salary expectations to NT$27,034 this year, Wu said 1111 Job Bank’s corporate clients were only willing to pay NT$24,986 a month.
Wu made the remarks as National Taiwan University held its annual campus recruiting event yesterday, which featured 168 participating companies compared to more than 200 last year, with a majority from the technology and financial services sectors.
Citibank representatives said the firm planned to increase local hiring, even though its parent Citigroup is in financial disarray and saw shares close last week at US$1.03 in New York trading.
In general, corporate representatives were reluctant to disclose what base salaries were and the number of positions open this year, while referring candidates to their online application sites.
With such bleak job prospects, Wu said job seekers should be open to employment outside Taiwan.
“Even if salary and expenses break even in the end, at least they would be gaining valuable work experiences,” he told the Taipei Times on the sideline of the campus job fair.
In January, 5.26 percent of college graduates were unemployed, compared to a 5.31 percent unemployment rate as a whole, the government’s latest unemployment data showed on Feb. 26.
Kilbinder Dosanjh, a senior economist at The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), said Taiwan’s unemployment rate would surge to 10 percent by the end of the year, the Central News Agency reported on Feb. 21.
Wu said high unemployment was likely to persist for many more months and that the economy was much worse off than the government’s data showed.
The government’s unemployment rate is calculated to any person who is available to work and currently seeking work, but is without work.
“But this definition does not take into account hidden unemployment,” Wu said, referring to a group of people “working less than 35 hours per week, who are not putting their expertise to use and who are making less than NT$10,368 per month.”
In addition, Wu doubted the efficacy of consumer vouchers issued earlier this year.
“If the NT$82.9 billion [US$2.3 billion] budget had been spent on unemployment benefits, at least each person could minimally sustain themselves on NT$138,000 for a year or at least six months,” Wu said.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday obtained the government’s approval to inject an additional US$7.5 billion into its US subsidiary, the Department of Investment Review said in a statement. The department approved TSMC’s application of investing in TSMC Arizona Corp, which is engaged in the manufacturing, sales, testing and design of IC and other semiconductor devices, it said. The latest capital injection follows a US$5 billion investment for TSMC Arizona approved in June. The chipmaker has broken ground on two advanced fabs in Arizona with aggregated investments approved by the department totaling US$24 billion thus far. According to TSMC, the first Arizona
The lethal hack of Hezbollah’s Asian-branded pagers and walkie-talkies has sparked an intense search for the devices’ path, revealing a murky market for older technologies where buyers might have few assurances about what they are getting. While supply chains and distribution channels for higher-margin and newer products are tightly managed, that is not the case for older electronics from Asia where counterfeiting, surplus inventories and complex contract manufacturing deals can sometimes make it impossible to identify the source of a product, analysts and consultants say. The response from the companies at the center of the booby-trapped gadgets that killed 37
FRIENDLY TAKEOVER: While Qualcomm Inc’s proposal to buy some or all of Intel raises the prospect of other competitors, Broadcom Inc is staying on the sidelines Qualcomm Inc has approached Intel Corp to discuss a potential acquisition of the struggling chipmaker, people with knowledge of the matter said, raising the prospect of one of the biggest-ever merger and acquisition deals. California-based Qualcomm proposed a friendly takeover for Intel in recent days, said the sources, who asked not to be identified discussing confidential information. The proposal is for all of the chipmaker, although Qualcomm has not ruled out buying some parts of Intel and selling off others. It is uncertain whether the initial approach would lead to an agreement and any deal is likely to come under close antitrust scrutiny
SECURITY CONCERNS: The proposed ban on Chinese autonomous vehicle software and hardware would go into effect with the 2027 and 2030 model years respectively The US Department of Commerce today is expected to propose prohibiting Chinese software and hardware in connected and autonomous vehicles on US roads due to national security concerns, two sources said. US President Joe Biden’s administration has raised concerns about the collection of data by Chinese companies on US drivers and infrastructure as well as the potential foreign manipulation of vehicles connected to the Internet and navigation systems. The proposed regulation would ban the import and sale of vehicles from China with key communications or automated driving system software or hardware, said the two sources, who declined to be identified because the