Employers have been facing a serious talent shortage during the post-COVID-19 period, with the manufacturing and service industries calling for an urgent government response and demanding that they be allowed to hire more foreign workers. The Cabinet has set a goal of attracting up to 400,000 foreign workers by 2030 to address the labor shortage, while the Ministry of Labor is easing rules for hiring migrant workers in manufacturing, construction, agriculture and long-term care, with an estimated 28,000 people likely to be admitted under the new policy.
Companies in the industrial and service sectors reported about 216,000 job vacancies in the first half of this year, a Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) survey showed. Most serious was the shortage of 84,000 mid-level technical workers, which includes technicians and associate professionals, craft and trade workers, as well as plant and machine operators. They accounted for about 39 percent of the vacancies, followed by openings for 51,000 professional personnel, and 41,000 service and sales staff.
The shortage of mid-level technical workers has persisted for a long time, but the number of job openings for service, shop and sales personnel reached the highest level in five years at about 19 percent of total vacancies. The DGBAS attributed the rise to people resuming consumption activity after the COVID-19 pandemic, boosting demand for service staff.
Nevertheless, it is the chronic shortage of mid-level technical workers that poses a critical problem to the nation’s long-term development, socially and economically. These skilled workers are vital to technology industries such as semiconductors and non-technology industries such as machinery making, the National Development Council says.
While the nation’s low birthrate is a major factor in the overall drop in the working population, the persistent decline in the number of vocational students in the past few years has contributed to the shortage of mid-level technical workers. The problem did not appear overnight. It reflects a long-term situation in which society values academic credentials over practical skills, while students prefer to attend universities and colleges rather than vocational schools.
The government has in the past few years implemented measures to retain skilled foreign workers after they complete their contracts. The continued retention and employment of experienced foreign workers can greatly reduce the time and cost of cultivating new workers. It can also prevent such workers from being poached by other countries and territories facing shrinking labor pools, such as China, Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea.
The “Long-term Retention of Skilled Foreign Workers Program” launched by the Ministry of Labor last year is aimed at allowing employers to retain foreign workers who have worked in Taiwan for at least six years. The program also provides opportunities for foreign workers to change their immigration status to “intermediate-skilled personnel,” which sets no limit on their work duration, while allowing them to apply for permanent residency after working for five years.
Demand for mid-level technical workers from local industries remains high, and the government must streamline the application process for employers to retain eligible workers. At the same time, it should promote vocational education and improve vocational schools, make vocational licenses and certifications more valuable, and promote the value of professional skills in society.
Would China attack Taiwan during the American lame duck period? For months, there have been worries that Beijing would seek to take advantage of an American president slowed by age and a potentially chaotic transition to make a move on Taiwan. In the wake of an American election that ended without drama, that far-fetched scenario will likely prove purely hypothetical. But there is a crisis brewing elsewhere in Asia — one with which US president-elect Donald Trump may have to deal during his first days in office. Tensions between the Philippines and China in the South China Sea have been at
A nation has several pillars of national defense, among them are military strength, energy and food security, and national unity. Military strength is very much on the forefront of the debate, while several recent editorials have dealt with energy security. National unity and a sense of shared purpose — especially while a powerful, hostile state is becoming increasingly menacing — are problematic, and would continue to be until the nation’s schizophrenia is properly managed. The controversy over the past few days over former navy lieutenant commander Lu Li-shih’s (呂禮詩) usage of the term “our China” during an interview about his attendance
Bo Guagua (薄瓜瓜), the son of former Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee Politburo member and former Chongqing Municipal Communist Party secretary Bo Xilai (薄熙來), used his British passport to make a low-key entry into Taiwan on a flight originating in Canada. He is set to marry the granddaughter of former political heavyweight Hsu Wen-cheng (許文政), the founder of Luodong Poh-Ai Hospital in Yilan County’s Luodong Township (羅東). Bo Xilai is a former high-ranking CCP official who was once a challenger to Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) for the chairmanship of the CCP. That makes Bo Guagua a bona fide “third-generation red”
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hypersonic missile carried a simple message to the West over Ukraine: Back off, and if you do not, Russia reserves the right to hit US and British military facilities. Russia fired a new intermediate-range hypersonic ballistic missile known as “Oreshnik,” or Hazel Tree, at Ukraine on Thursday in what Putin said was a direct response to strikes on Russia by Ukrainian forces with US and British missiles. In a special statement from the Kremlin just after 8pm in Moscow that day, the Russian president said the war was escalating toward a global conflict, although he avoided any nuclear
RSS