November jobless figure improves for third straight month
Taiwan’s unemployment rate stood at 5.86 percent in November, improving month-on-month for the third month in a row since a record high of 6.13 percent was registered in August.
“The better job tally, more employed workers and extended overtime hours all point to increasing corporate recruitment and stabilizing unemployment,” Liu Tian-syh, deputy director of the Bureau of Census under the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, said Dec. 22. “The global economic recovery, trade growth and higher consumption were the factors behind the favorable development,” he added.
The November reading was lower than the 5.96 percent posted in October but higher than the 4.64 percent recorded a year earlier.
On a seasonally adjusted basis, the November unemployment rate was 5.98 percent, falling from 6.04 percent in October but rising from 4.64 percent the year before. The all-time-high monthly peak was 6.09 percent in September.
The DGBAS said 645,000 people were jobless in November, a net decline of 8,000 from the month before.
The drop in the number of jobless was mainly a reflection of 8,000 fewer workers losing their jobs due to business closures or cutbacks, as well as 3,000 fewer school graduates failing to find employment.
Major factors pushing unemployment back up, however, included 3,000 former workers who quit working due to dissatisfaction with their previous jobs, as well as 2,000 who became jobless due to the end of seasonal or temporary jobs.
On a year-on-year basis, the total number of jobless people in November increased by 138,000, the DGBAS said.
Among the numbers suggesting stabilization in the job market, however, was the 6.36 million employees in the industrial and service sectors in October, the highest level in nine months. That figure represents an increase of 15,000 workers from September and the fifth consecutive month of job growth in the two sectors.
Overtime in October also grew by 0.4 hours over September, increasing for the fourth straight month.
In the first 11 months of the year, the jobless rate averaged 5.86 percent, an increase of 1.8 percentage points from the corresponding period last year, the DGBAS said.
The 5.86 unemployment rate for the period from January to November exceeded the Council for Economic Planning and Development’s 4.5 percent target for all of 2009, a goal set late last year. The Cabinet-level CEPD has just set the 2010 jobless target at 4.9 percent.
Liu said a reduction in the unemployment rate to below 5 percent would require an increase of 150,000 new job opportunities. “The pace of economic recovery and government stimulus packages will be crucial to achieving that goal,” Liu noted.
Separately, the DGBAS said that average monthly earnings in October—including regular and irregular incomes—per employee in the industrial and service sectors advanced 1.4 percent from a year ago to NT$40,156 (US$1,241), marking the first year-on-year growth in nine months.
The DGBAS figure for average regular income was NT$36,143 for October. While that reading marks a 1.13-percent decline from the year before, the magnitude of the drop represents the smallest in 12 months.
“The recovering economy gave a boost to employee earnings,” Liu explained. (HML)
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