The number of job vacancies hit 1.04 million this month, having remained above 1 million for the past nine straight months, as firms seek to secure sufficient workers ahead of the holiday season, the online 104 Job Bank (104人力銀行) said yesterday.
The number of vacancies represents an increase of 4.2 percent from the same time last year, with hotels and restaurants accounting for 215,000, retailers, direct selling and wholesale operators contributing 168,000, and electronics, software and semiconductor firms providing another 15,5000, the job bank said.
“It may become a new normal for job vacancies to exceed 1 million,” due to Taiwan’s rapidly aging population, the job bank said, adding that Taiwan’s population has declined for the past three consecutive years, with a record low of newborns at 138,000 last year.
Photo: CNA
If the trend remains unchanged, the workforce will downsize further, a phenomenon that is reinforced by changes in values among young people, it said.
Young people today do not consider it a virtue to follow their supervisors’ orders and assign less importance to loyalty, different surveys of the working population showed.
Young people also do not like to work overtime, considering their own wellness and rights to be more important. When forced to work overtime, young people tend to demand extra pay and fight to guard their rights and interests, it said.
Relative flexibility and freedom explain why young people prefer to work as couriers for e-commerce and food delivery service providers rather than making beds and waiting tables, it said.
An increasing number of employers have turned to middle-aged and elderly applicants to join their payroll, the job bank said in an earlier survey.
Such recruitment advertisements amounted to 194,000, making up 18.5 percent of the overall vacancies, 1.66 times higher than four years ago, it said.
The figures reveal that more than 50 percent of employers remain unwilling to hire middle-aged and older people, it said.
At the same time, 85 percent of middle-aged and elderly jobseekers said they still need to work for financial and other reasons and they care the most about working locations, followed by job requirements and wages, it said.
Labor-intensive manufacturers and service providers need to recognize middle-aged and elderly people are an importance human resource that can help relieve labor shortages, the job bank said.
The Ministry of Labor yesterday again rejected pleas by the hospitality sector to hire foreign workers to bolster their businesses, saying a continued mismatch between compensation offers and wage expectations account for their lack of manpower.
The nation’s labor pool remains underdeveloped and employers should adjust and offer better pay to deal with the matter, the ministry said.
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