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.
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
TIGHT-LIPPED: UMC said it had no merger plans at the moment, after Nikkei Asia reported that the firm and GlobalFoundries were considering restarting merger talks United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電), the world’s No. 4 contract chipmaker, yesterday launched a new US$5 billion 12-inch chip factory in Singapore as part of its latest effort to diversify its manufacturing footprint amid growing geopolitical risks. The new factory, adjacent to UMC’s existing Singapore fab in the Pasir Res Wafer Fab Park, is scheduled to enter volume production next year, utilizing mature 22-nanometer and 28-nanometer process technologies, UMC said in a statement. The company plans to invest US$5 billion during the first phase of the new fab, which would have an installed capacity of 30,000 12-inch wafers per month, it said. The
MULTIFACETED: A task force has analyzed possible scenarios and created responses to assist domestic industries in dealing with US tariffs, the economics minister said The Executive Yuan is tomorrow to announce countermeasures to US President Donald Trump’s planned reciprocal tariffs, although the details of the plan would not be made public until Monday next week, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. The Cabinet established an economic and trade task force in November last year to deal with US trade and tariff related issues, Kuo told reporters outside the legislature in Taipei. The task force has been analyzing and evaluating all kinds of scenarios to identify suitable responses and determine how best to assist domestic industries in managing the effects of Trump’s tariffs, he
Taiwan’s official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) last month rose 0.2 percentage points to 54.2, in a second consecutive month of expansion, thanks to front-loading demand intended to avoid potential US tariff hikes, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. While short-term demand appeared robust, uncertainties rose due to US President Donald Trump’s unpredictable trade policy, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s economy this year would be characterized by high-level fluctuations and the volatility would be wilder than most expect, Lien said Demand for electronics, particularly semiconductors, continues to benefit from US technology giants’ effort
RSS