Unemployment rate reaches record high of 5.81% in March

Huang Chien-chung, deputy director of the Fourth Bureau of the DGBAS, told a press conference that the island's jobless rate had soared for 11 consecutive months as of the end of March.

The 5.81 percent jobless for March can be seasonally adjusted to 5.72 percent, both hitting record highs since the unemployment data was first compiled in 1978, according to Huang.

Meanwhile, the number of people unemployed in March rose to 630,000, which was also the highest figure of its kind in 31 years.

Of the unemployed population in March, those who lost jobs as a result of business downsizing or suspension by their employers accounted for 344,000, also a record high. Over the past seven months, the number of people that became jobless for such reason showed an aggregate increase of 213,000, the same DGBAS tallies indicated.

Huang also noted at the press conference that the number of people affected by the worsening unemployment in March came to 1.377 million, also a historical high. The past seven months saw an increase of 453,000 in such people.

Another worsening indicator for the domestic job market is the rising number of middle-aged jobless people. In March, the number of unemployed people aged between 45 and 64 reached a historical high of 141,000.

In addition, the number of people employed by the industrial and service sectors came to 6.317 million as of the end of February, showing a decrease of 0.89 percent from the end of January, for the sixth consecutive monthly drop of its kind seen since September 2008.

In fact, Huang said, the deterioration of Taiwan's unemployment situation has slowed down due to several indicators.

First is that the seasonally-adjusted or non-seasonally-adjusted jobless rate in March posted an increase of 0.06 to 0.09 of a percentage point over one month earlier, with such growth rate the lowest in seven months.

Second, the number of people with a weekly working time of under 35 hours in March showed a sharp decrease of 153,000 from February, as a result of quite a few enterprises dropping their unpaid-leave programs.

Third the number of latent unemployed people was 258,000 in March, down 25,000 from February, indicating the deterioration of unemployment had slowed down.

According to Huang, the island's jobless rate may soar past the 6 percent level to hit 6.21 percent but for government's employment stimulus program, economy-stimulus measures and domestic demand expansion schemes.

One day earlier, Chairwoman Jennifer Wang of the Council for Labor Affairs said confidently that the jobless rate wouldn't exceed 6 percent in March.

But manpower resources experts said that it's a matter of time for the island's jobless rate to soar past the 6 percent level, because the jobless rate will reflect the real economic conditions by a time lag of six months.

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