Unemployment rises due to graduates

JOBSEEKERS:Students fresh out of university, searching for their first jobs, raised the unemployment level last month, while some sectors saw average wages rise

The unemployment rate rose to 4.08 percent last month from 4.02 percent in July, but the figure is still the lowest level posted in August for the past 14 years, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.

The results were in line with the agency’s expectations, as recent university graduates entered the job market last month, giving the figures a slight bump.

However, the 4.08 percent unemployment rate represents the lowest level for August since 2000, indicating that the unemployment was better than seasonal, the DGBAS said in its monthly report.

The increase in first-time jobseekers usually boosts unemployment figures in the June-to-August period, as it did last month, contributing to a month-on-month rise for the third consecutive month, DGBAS Deputy Director Lo Yi-ling (羅怡玲) said.

“The nation’s unemployment rate may show a month-on-month rise for this month, if no significant accident occurs,” Lo told a press conference.

The number of unemployed rose by 9,000 to 473,000 last month from a month earlier, with the number of first-time jobseekers failing to get an offer up by 5,000 month-on-month, the report said.

For the first eight months of the year, the unemployment rate stood at 3.99 percent, down 0.19 percentage points from the same period last year, but that is the highest period level since 2009, the report’s data showed.

1111 Job Bank (1111人力銀行) public relations director Daniel Lee (李大華) said demand for human resources has been relatively strong this year, with demand from the service sector in the year-end period to be the major factor deciding movement of the unemployment rate in the second half of this year.

The DGBAS report also said that average monthly wage in the industrial and service sectors climbed to NT$38,460 in July, its highest level since February 2012.

In the first seven months, average monthly wage in the industrial and service sectors climbed to a record-high level of NT$38,036, an increase of 1.58 percent from the previous year, the report said.

The overall average monthly wage, including bonuses and compensation, rose 4.45 percent to a new high of NT$49,708 in the January-to-July period, compared with the same period in the previous year, statistics showed.

However, the increase in the average monthly wage was still lower than the pace of the nation’s headline inflation reading.

After adjusting the average for inflation — which climbed 1.29 percent year-on-year in the first seven months — the real average wage, including bonuses and compensation, totaled NT$47,953.

This is still lower than the NT$48,774 recorded during the same period in 1999, according to the DGBAS’ data.