Worst unemployment to emerge around Chinese New Year, says economist

Lin said the former ruling Democratic Progressive Party used to spend at least NT$80 billion to launch various employment-enhancement programs, managing to reducing the jobless rate to under 4 percent from a high of 5.17 percent in 2002, when the dot.com. bubble burst.

In fact, the current ruling Kuomintang government is actively enforcing a spate of measures to create job opportunities to lower the unemployment rate, according to Shan Chi, vice chairman of the Council for Economic Planning and Development.

Shan said that the ongoing “take the jobs immediately” program, which will run through the end of June 2009, will create 140,000 job opportunities.

Starting 2008 and running through 2012, the government will implement an employment promotion package, under which the government will invest NT$6.8 billion to create 55,000 job opportunities per year. This means that over the next four years, the government will funnel a total of NT$27.2 billion to help employ at least 220,000 people, according to Shan.

He said that in the case of an economic upturn, it’s quite possible that the island’s jobless rate may fall under 3 percent.

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