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.
Intel Corp chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) is expected to meet with Taiwanese suppliers next month in conjunction with the opening of the Computex Taipei trade show, supply chain sources said on Monday. The visit, the first for Tan to Taiwan since assuming his new post last month, would be aimed at enhancing Intel’s ties with suppliers in Taiwan as he attempts to help turn around the struggling US chipmaker, the sources said. Tan is to hold a banquet to celebrate Intel’s 40-year presence in Taiwan before Computex opens on May 20 and invite dozens of Taiwanese suppliers to exchange views
Application-specific integrated circuit designer Faraday Technology Corp (智原) yesterday said that although revenue this quarter would decline 30 percent from last quarter, it retained its full-year forecast of revenue growth of 100 percent. The company attributed the quarterly drop to a slowdown in customers’ production of chips using Faraday’s advanced packaging technology. The company is still confident about its revenue growth this year, given its strong “design-win” — or the projects it won to help customers design their chips, Faraday president Steve Wang (王國雍) told an online earnings conference. “The design-win this year is better than we expected. We believe we will win
Chizuko Kimura has become the first female sushi chef in the world to win a Michelin star, fulfilling a promise she made to her dying husband to continue his legacy. The 54-year-old Japanese chef regained the Michelin star her late husband, Shunei Kimura, won three years ago for their Sushi Shunei restaurant in Paris. For Shunei Kimura, the star was a dream come true. However, the joy was short-lived. He died from cancer just three months later in June 2022. He was 65. The following year, the restaurant in the heart of Montmartre lost its star rating. Chizuko Kimura insisted that the new star is still down
While China’s leaders use their economic and political might to fight US President Donald Trump’s trade war “to the end,” its army of social media soldiers are embarking on a more humorous campaign online. Trump’s tariff blitz has seen Washington and Beijing impose eye-watering duties on imports from the other, fanning a standoff between the economic superpowers that has sparked global recession fears and sent markets into a tailspin. Trump says his policy is a response to years of being “ripped off” by other countries and aims to bring manufacturing to the US, forcing companies to employ US workers. However, China’s online warriors
RSS