The nation’s unemployment rate last month dropped to 3.66 percent, falling for the sixth straight month, as fewer people quit their jobs, but slightly more than left seasonal or temporary positions, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
The rate was the lowest in 12 months, but remained at a four-year high for January, as the job market has not yet fully recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic, DGBAS Deputy Director Chen Hui-hsin (陳惠欣) told a media briefing.
“Unemployment usually declines in January, but could rise this month as people disatisfied with their jobs tend to move on after receiving their year-end bonus,” Chen said.
Photo: Cheng Chi-fang, Taipei Times
This trend was disrupted last year as the COVID-19 outbreak weakened economic activity and people did not seek new positions over economic fears.
The jobless rate after seasonal adjustments held steady at 3.75 percent, suggesting a stable market, Chen said.
The number of jobless people shrank by 0.52 percent, or 2,000, to 438,000 last month, the agency’s monthly report showed.
While about 3,000 fewer first-time jobseekers entered the market and about 1,000 fewer people entered after quitting their jobs, 2,000 people left their temporary positions, it showed.
The labor participation rate was 59.14 percent, unchanged from December last year and down 0.07 percentage points year-on-year, it said.
The unemployment period averaged 22.2 weeks, longer than the 22.1 weeks one month earlier, it said, adding that the period for first-time jobseekers shrank to 21.1 weeks.
People with university degrees had the highest unemployment rate at 5.33 percent, followed by high-school graduates at 3.35 percent and people with other graduate degrees at 2.86 percent, the report showed.
People with a junior-college education had the lowest unemployment rate at 2.5 percent, followed by those with a junior-high school education at 2.67 percent, it showed.
People aged 20 to 24 had the highest unemployment rate at 11.96 percent, followed by 15 to 19-year-olds at 8.4 percent, 25 to 29-year-olds at 6.22 percent and 30 to 34-year-olds at 3.58 percent, the report showed.
People aged 45 to 64 had the lowest unemployment rate of 2.16 percent, it showed.
The nation’s unemployment rate is lower than South Korea’s 5.7 percent, Hong Kong’s 6.5 percent and Germany’s 4.4 percent, but higher than Japan’s 2.8 percent, government data showed.
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