GIVE AND TAKE:While take-home wages rose 1.78 percent year-on-year in March, average pay in the first quarter including year-end bonuses dropped 1.56 percent

Taipei Times
Date: May 24, 2016
By: Crystal Hsu / Staff reporter

The unemployment rate last month fell to 3.86 percent, a decline of 0.03 percentage points from March, with fewer people quitting while others lost their jobs to business downsizing and closures, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics said yesterday.

The latest jobless data represented a 0.23 percentage point increase from a year earlier, suggesting that companies remained conservative about hiring amid a soft economy, the agency said.

“The monthly drop in the unemployment rate was the smallest in 15 years, indicating that economic weakness weighed on the job market,” deputy section head Chang Yun-yun (張雲澐) told a news conference.

The unemployment rate after seasonal adjustments was 3.97 percent, up from 3.92 percent in March, signaling that the nation’s job market is slowly deteriorating, the report said.     [FULL  STORY]