Taiwan's unemployment rate drops in November

The unemployment rate in November dropped slightly by 0.02 percentage points to 4.28 percent from the previous month, Taiwan’s statistics department said on Dec 22.

However, after seasonal adjustment, the jobless rate was 4.32 percent, up 0.02 percentage points from the previous month.

November saw a drop of 2,000 in the number of jobless people to 482,000 from a month earlier, and a decline of 0.45 percentage points in the unemployment rate from the same month last year.

Some people lost their jobs due to operation cutbacks or temporary work shutdowns, while some were laid off because of seasonal fluctuations in their industries and trades.

Unemployment among first-time job hunters, however, dropped by 3,000, while that among job hoppers jumped by 2,000, compared with a month earlier.

The average jobless rate of the January-November period fell by 0.86 percentage points to 4.4 percent from the same period last year, the data showed.