Taipei Times
Date: Aug 23, 2016
By: Crystal Hsu / Staff reporter
The nation’s jobless rate rose to 4.02 percent last month, as fresh graduates and an economic slowdown raised the gauge to the highest level in about two years, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
The figures represent a new high since August 2014 after gaining 0.1 percentage points from 3.92 percent in June and picked up 0.2 percentage points from a year earlier, the agency said.
“The soft economy has weighed on the job market since the second half of last year, but the situation did not deteriorate much last month,” DGBAS senior executive officer Pan Ning-hsin (潘寧馨) said, adding that the jobless rate after seasonal adjustments stood unchanged at 3.96 percent.
The unemployed population increased by 13,000 people to 472,000 people last month from a month earlier, with 12,000 first-time job seekers and 1,000 people who lost their seasonal or temporary jobs, the report said. [FULL STORY]