Taiwan’s youth unemployment rate hit 13 percent in July last year, the second-highest monthly youth unemployment rate in East Asia that year, behind only Hong Kong’s 15.1 percent recorded in June, according to a report released by the International Labour Organization (ILO) this week.
In the Global Employment Trends 2013 report released on Tuesday, the ILO, the employment watchdog of the UN, showed that Taiwan’s youth unemployment rate for the 15 to 24 age group in July last year was much higher than the 9.6 percent registered by its economic rival South Korea in the same month.
The ILO’s figure showed youth unemployment in Taiwan was much worse than the overall jobless situation in the country. According to the statistics compiled by the government, the overall jobless rate in July last year stood at 4.25 percent.
For last year as a whole, the overall unemployment rate stood at 4.24 percent, down 0.15 percentage points from a year earlier and the closest it has been to 4 percent since 2008, when the country’s jobless rate was 4.14 percent.
As for the economy in East Asia, the ILO said it was affected by various unfavorable global factors, including the lingering debt problems in the eurozone, which pushed up youth unemployment last year by 0.3 percentage points to 9.5 percent.
More young men in East Asia were unemployed than young women.
The report showed the jobless rate among male youth in East Asia last year reached 11.2 percent, while unemployment for female youth in the region was 7.6 percent.
For East Asia as a whole, youth unemployment was also more severe than overall unemployment. The rate of unemployed youth was 2.7 times that of older people.
In addition to the unsatisfactory employment data for youth in East Asia, the ILO said the overall job market conditions in the region were disappointing, adding that employment in the region for last year rose only 0.5 percentage points, or about 4.5 million people, from a year earlier.
Before the global financial crisis broke out, employment had risen 1.2 percentage points annually from 2002 to 2007, the report said.
Employment in Macau in the middle of last year rose 4.9 percentage points from the the same period of 2011, compared with an increase of 2.7 percentage points in Hong Kong, a rise of 1.9 percentage points in South Korea and an increase of 1.2 percentage points in Taiwan.
The report said employment growth in Taiwan and South Korea from last year to next year is expected to range between 0.5 percentage points and 1 percentage point.
CAUTION: Based on intelligence from the nation’s security agencies, MOFA has cautioned Taiwanese travelers about heightened safety risks in China-friendly countries The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday urged Taiwanese to be aware of their safety when traveling abroad, especially in countries that are friendly to China. China in June last year issued 22 guidelines that allow its courts to try in absentia and sentence to death so-called “diehard” Taiwanese independence activists, even though Chinese courts have no jurisdiction in Taiwan. Late last month, a senior Chinese official gave closed-door instructions to state security units to implement the guidelines in countries friendly to China, a government memo and a senior Taiwan security official said, based on information gathered by Taiwan’s intelligence agency. The
The National Immigration Agency (NIA) said yesterday that it will revoke the dependent-based residence permit of a Chinese social media influencer who reportedly “openly advocated for [China’s] unification through military force” with Taiwan. The Chinese national, identified by her surname Liu (劉), will have her residence permit revoked in accordance with Article 14 of the “Measures for the permission of family- based residence, long-term residence and settlement of people from the Mainland Area in the Taiwan Area,” the NIA said in a news release. The agency explained it received reports that Liu made “unifying Taiwan through military force” statements on her online
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, said yesterday that it is looking to hire 8,000 people this year, at a time when the tech giant is expanding production capacity to maintain its lead over competitors. To attract talent, TSMC would launch a large-scale recruitment campaign on campuses across Taiwan, where a newly recruited engineer with a master’s degree could expect to receive an average salary of NT$2.2 million (US$60,912), which is much higher than the 2023 national average of NT$709,000 for those in the same category, according to government statistics. TSMC, which accounted for more than 60 percent
Tung Tzu-hsien (童子賢), a Taiwanese businessman and deputy convener of the nation’s National Climate Change Committee, said yesterday that “electrical power is national power” and nuclear energy is “very important to Taiwan.” Tung made the remarks, suggesting that his views do not align with the country’s current official policy of phasing out nuclear energy, at a forum organized by the Taiwan People’s Party titled “Challenges and Prospects of Taiwan’s AI Industry and Energy Policy.” “Taiwan is currently pursuing industries with high added- value and is developing vigorously, and this all requires electricity,” said the chairman
RSS