The nation’s unemployment rate last month rose to 3.39 percent from 3.34 percent in May, mainly because the graduation season started, increasing the number of first-time jobseekers, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
The unemployment figure was the lowest in 24 years for June, despite increasing 0.05 percentage points from May, Census Department Deputy Director Chen Hui-hsin (陳惠欣) said.
“The figures suggested a stable market,” Chen said, adding that unemployment numbers would rise slightly this month and next month.
Photo: CNA
The unemployment rate tends to increase 0.1 to 0.22 percentage points during the graduation season, she said.
The jobless rate after seasonal adjustments only dropped 0.01 percentage points from a month earlier to 3.34 percent, as Taiwan’s low fertility rate means the number of workers is dropping, Chen said.
The number of unemployed people rose by 6,000, or 1.61 percent, to 406,000, bolstered mainly by the number of first-time jobseekers increasing by 4,000, the DGBAS said, adding that the number of temporary jobseekers also tends to grow in the summer.
Graduation season explained why people aged 20 to 24 had the highest unemployment rate of 11.64 percent, ahead of an unemployment rate of 9.03 percent among 15 to 19-year-olds, the DGBAS said.
At the same time, 1,000 discounted workers, who quit their jobs and had not yet found a new one, contributed to the unemployed population, the agency said.
By educational breakdown, people with a university degree had the highest unemployment rate of 4.54 percent, followed by high-school graduates at 3.22 percent, people with junior college diplomas at 2.72 percent and people with a graduate degree at 2.5 percent, the statistics agency found.
People with a junior-high school or lower education had the lowest unemployment rate of 2.16 percent.
Meanwhile, people aged 45 to 64 had the lowest unemployment rate of 2.14 percent, followed by people aged 40 to 44 at 2.52 percent, those aged 35 to 39 at 2.64 percent, and the 30 to 34 age group at 3.3 percent, it said.
People aged 25 to 29 had the third-highest unemployment rate of 5.84 percent.
The unemployment period averaged 20.8 weeks last month, declining 1.6 weeks from a month earlier, the DGBAS said.
For first-time jobseekers, the unemployment period was 17.8 weeks, as summer jobseekers were more flexible in their search for work.
Taiwan’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate of 3.34 percent was higher than Japan’s 2.6 percent, South Korea’s 2.8 percent and Hong Kong’s 3 percent.
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