TAIPEI: A bleak employment picture emerges from the disclosure that approximately 45,000 2008 university graduates who posted resumes with the online employment broker 104 Job Bank are still looking for work.

According to figures released yesterday by the company, 210,000 graduates posted resumes on the job bank site. The number who still have not found employment amounts to 21 percent of the total.

The company also released the results of a survey conducted March 9-12 among 1,135 graduates. It showed that 14.8 percent of the job seekers had been searching for jobs for over eight months.

Asked about the reasons behind their failure to find jobs, 48.5 percent of job seekers cited lack of work experience while 38.6 percent said they found the competition too numerous in a tight job market.

Among those surveyed, 31.1 percent of job seekers complained employment opportunities were scarce. Another reason for failure cited by 29.8 percent of recipients was that they lacked professional skills. The job bank, also cited another potential reason for the failure of many of last year's graduates to find jobs: that some may have failed to adjust their job-search strategies to meet conditions in the labor market.

While 33 percent of job seekers targeted general administrative positions and 21.5 percent applied to become customer service agents, these are positions not in high demand among the commercial sector, the job bank said.

The latest data from the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics show that Taiwan's unemployment rate continued to rise, reaching 5.75 percent in February thanks to the economic downturn. With 634,000 people out of work by February, job hunting became much more difficult for first-time job seekers, who waited an average of 34.1 weeks to find a job.

China Daily/CNA

(HK Edition 04/08/2009 page1)