The nation’s unemployment rate was 3.36 percent last month, down 0.02 percentage points from a month earlier, as local manufacturers emerged from a global slowdown and service providers reported solid business, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
It was the lowest figure for the month of April in 24 years, as first-time jobseekers landed positions and fewer people quit, Census Department Deputy Director Chen Hui-hsin (陳惠欣) said.
Changes to the job market would be insignificant this month, but would be noticeable in June due to the graduation season, Chen told a news conference in Taipei.
Photo: CNA
The unemployment rate after seasonal adjustments slipped 0.01 percentage points to 3.39 percent, while the reading for the past four weeks dropped 0.11 percentage points to 3.38 percent, confirming positive cyclical changes, she said.
A DGBAS report showed that 403,000 people were unemployed last month, a 0.56 percent decline from March after the number of first-time jobseekers dropped by 2,000 and the number of people who quit fell by 1,000.
Hotels and restaurants have increased their payrolls for 20 months in a row, indicating that private consumption remains healthy two years after the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions, Chen said.
By contrast, retailers cut 3,000 temporary positions after business demand linked to the Tomb Sweeping holiday died out, she said.
The number of people who lost their jobs due to downsizing and closures rose by 2,000 to 101,000, but the figure was below the average of 105,000 before the COVID-19 pandemic, so there is no need to worry, Chen said.
The average unemployment period was 20.8 weeks, half a week shorter that a month earlier, but the figure grew by 0.4 weeks to 25.3 weeks for first-time jobseekers, the report said.
By educational breakdown, people with a university degree had the highest unemployment rate of 4.46 percent, followed by high-school graduates at 3.27 percent, people with a junior college diploma at 2.71 percent and people with a graduate degree at 2.44 percent, it said.
People with a junior-high education or lower had the lowest unemployment rate of 2.13 percent, it said.
Demographically, people aged 20 to 24 had the highest unemployment rate of 11.36 percent, followed by people aged 15 to 19 at 8.2 percent, those aged 25 to 29 at 5.79 percent and the 30 to 34 age group at 3.3 percent, it said.
People aged 45 to 64 had the lowest unemployment rate of 2.15 percent, the report said.
Regionally, Taiwan’s four-week unemployment rate of 3.38 percent is higher than South Korea’s 3 percent, Japan’s 2.7 percent and Kong Kong’s 2.9 percent, the DGBAS said.
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