Taiwan's jobless rate falls for 5th consecutive month in January

Taipei, Feb. 29 (CNA) Taiwan's jobless rate fell for the fifth consecutive month in January, to 3.31 percent, as demand for workers continued to grow, the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said Thursday.

The country's jobless rate fell 0.02 percentage points from a month earlier to 3.31 percent in January, data compiled by the DGBAS showed.

After seasonal adjustments, the jobless rate was 3.39 percent in January, the same as the previous month, according to the data.

The increasing demand for workers was fueled by booming business activities before the Lunar New Year holiday, DGBAS Census Department Deputy Director Chen Hui-hsin (陳惠欣) explained.

The latest unemployment figure was the fifth consecutive monthly decline and the lowest recorded in January since 2000, Chen said.

The number of people who became unemployed due to business closures or downsizing also fell, a trend that is more in line with pre-pandemic levels, she said.

In January, the number of of people in gainful employment stood at 11.58 million, up by 4,000 or 0.03 percent, from a month earlier, with the labor participation rate at 59.25 percent, down 0.01 percentage points from a month earlier.

According to the DGBAS, if the calculation was based on the standard adopted by the International Labor Organization (ILO), which identifies "the unemployed" as those individuals who searched for a job in the last four weeks including the reference week, Taiwan's jobless rate in January would have been 3.35 percent, with a 0.03 percentage drop over the previous month.

Chen said the standard used by the DGBAS to calculate the unemployment rate is based solely on the reference week (a seven-day period), not the four-week standard employed by the ILO.

This definition of unemployment includes individuals aged 15 and over who meet the following conditions during a reference week: "Have no work but wish to work," "looking for work or waiting for the results of a job search" and "can begin work at any time."