Office workers burned by global financial meltdown

The online poll released Saturday by the 104 Job Bank showed that among the money-losing workers, 12 percent sustained losses of several hundreds of thousands of Taiwan dollars while 2.2 percent reported losses of over NT$1 million.

According to the survey, 24.1 percent of those who lost more than NT$100,000 (US$2,990) due to the financial storm work in the investment, financial consulting services and insurance sectors, 18.3 percent work in the electronics and information sectors, and 14.9 percent are in construction.

Those losses may be impacting consumer spending. The survey found that respondents budgeted an average of NT$2,112 to spend during this year’s department store anniversary sales, down from last year, although some retailers have reported brisk sales during their sale periods.

Over 46 percent of respondents said they would spend less during the anniversary sales than last year, while 33 percent said they would spend the same amount, while 20.6 percent said they planned to spend more this year.

104 Job Bank researchers concluded that people were restraining their spending urges because of the rising prices of commodities and a global economic recession.

As to the 20.6 percent of respondents who intended to spend more during the department store sales this year, the researchers said they were “trying to save money by taking advantage of preferential discounts” offered by the retailers.

The survey was conducted between Sept. 30 and Oct. 4 among 104 Job Bank members. A total of 3,919 valid samples were collected, and the survey’s margin of error was plus or minus 1.57 percent.

On Wednesday, the government released statistics showing the unemployment rate was 4.27 percent in September, 0.13 percentage points higher than a month earlier. Some 12,000 more people were without jobs.

The average monthly unemployment rate over the first nine months of 2008 was 3.96 percent, 0.04 percentage points higher than the same period last year, the government figures showed.

Ryan Wu, chief operating officer of Internet-based 1111 Job Bank, said the rising jobless rate reflected the spread of the global financial crisis and credit crunch to industrial and commercial sectors around the country.

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