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進入《TAIPEI TIMES》 Unemployment drops to 4.53 percent
Jobseekers visit a job fair in Kaohsiung on July 11, 2017. Photo: Huang Liang-chieh, Taipei Times
NOT ENTIRELY POSITIVE: Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, the unemployment rate for the month of July was the highest it had been in 11 years, the DGBAS said
By Crystal Hsu / Staff reporter
The unemployment rate last month declined to 4.53 percent, from 4.8 percent a month earlier, as fewer people lost jobs to business downsizing and closures, despite an increase in the number of first-time jobseekers, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics （DGBAS） said yesterday.
The agency attributed the decline in unemployment to a stabilization in the number of COVID-19 cases, which allowed restaurants and retailers to regain partial momentum.
However, the unemployment rate for the month of July was the highest it had been in the past 11 years, as the negative impact of the virus outbreak lingered, the DGBAS said.
The unemployment rate after seasonal adjustments shed 0.4 percentage points to 4.36 percent, affirming a downward trend, it said.
“Two major factors — the graduation season and improvement in virus controls — will set the trajectory for jobless rates this month, as the former will push up the reading and the latter will tame unemployment,” DGBAS Deputy Director Chen Hui-hsin （陳惠欣） told a news conference in Taipei.
The working population increased by 63,000 to 11.36 million, while the unemployed population shrank by 31,000 to 539,000, the DGBAS report showed.
The service sector contributed more than 50,000 new jobs and the industrial sector added about 11,000, it said.
Meanwhile, 937,000 people worked fewer than 35 hours a week last month, down 47,000 from June, as affected businesses seek to make do by reducing working hours, the report said.
The number of first-time jobseekers grew by 7,000 from a month earlier, it found.
The number of unemployed people increased by 60,000 from a year earlier, indicating that COVID-19 hit the job market harder this year, the report said.
People need to spend longer hunting for jobs these days, with the average unemployment period being 18.3 weeks, compared with 16.5 weeks in June, the report said, adding that the number of people who were unemployed for a year or longer increased by 8,000 to 49,000.
By education breakdown, university graduates had the highest unemployment rate of 5.86 percent, followed by high-school graduates at 4.6 percent and junior-high school graduates at 3.8 percent, it said.
Younger people had the highest rate of unemployment at 13.87 percent for those aged 20 to 24, followed by 15-to-19-year-olds at 9.26 percent and 25-to-29-year-olds at 7.12 percent, the report said.
The unemployment rate for people aged 30 to 34 was 4.15 percent and declined to 3.31 percent for people aged 35 to 39, it said.
People aged 40 to 64 had unemployment rates of 3.18 percent to 3.19 percent.
Taiwan’s unemployment rate is lower than Kong Kong’s 5.2 percent, but higher than South Korea’s 3.2 percent and Japan’s 3 percent, although South Korea and Japan had much worse COVID-19 outbreaks, the DGBAS said.
新聞來源：TAIPEI TIMES
