Jobless rate hits five-year high in Oct.

Officials say the jobless outlook could remain bleak for the next 12 months, unless the government’s economic stimulus program is effectively executed, to start generating concrete effects in time.

One positive figure in the October employment data was the total number of people employed that month amounted to 10.424 million, up 19,000 from the previous month and representing a new high since October 2006, according to statistics released by the Directorate General of the Budget, Accounting & Statistics (DGBAS) yesterday.

The number of employed people in the January-October period averaged 10.407 million, a 1.24 percent year-on-year rise. But the rise represented the slowest pace of growth for the same 10-month period in the past five years, another sign of Taiwan’s slowing labor market momentum, said DGBAS official Huang Jiann-jong.

The October unemployment figure of 4.37 percent was marginally higher than September’s 4.27 percent and marked the sixth consecutive monthly increase.

The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for October also rose for the fourth consecutive month to 4.29 percent, a new high for the month since 2003 when the Democratic Progressive Party was in power.

The numbers of indicators reflect the country’s weakening labor market as a result of the global economic downturn, Huang said.

The seasonally adjusted jobless figure of 4.29 percent, the highest for any single month since March 2005, also reflects “structural changes in the domestic labor market.”

If the seasonally adjusted jobless rate records four monthly increases in a row, then the structural change may last for as long as a year, based on previous experiences such as the oil crisis and the bursting of the Internet bubble at the beginning of this decade, Huang explained.

The jobless rate in the first 10 months averaged 4.01 percent, up 0.09 percentage points year-on-year and the highest for the January-October period in the past three years.

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