The Labour Affairs Bureau (DSAL) said in a statement on Friday that as of the end of last month it had assisted 9,356 jobseekers in getting back to work, which was 1.5 times the total number of 6,288 people who found new jobs with the help of the bureau during the whole of last year.
The statement quoted data released by the Statistics and Census Bureau (DSEC) as pointing out that the unemployment rate of local residents dropped from 5.2 percent in the third quarter of last year to 3.3 percent in May-July this year, while the number of applications for the government’s Confirmation of Involuntary Unemployment Allowance continued to decrease from month to month, with the number of applications falling to just 199 last month, down from the pre-COVID-19 pandemic number of 234 in December 2019, showing that “with the simultaneous implementation of multiple measures, the cyclical unemployment caused by the pandemic has been alleviated to a certain extent, and the local employment situation has tended to be stable and improved”.
According to the Statistics and Census Bureau, the statement said, the number of jobless people was mainly made up of former workers in the construction and gaming industries whose respective unemployment numbers have dropped from a peak of 2,500 and 3,900 to 2,100 and 1,900 recently, thanks to various support services and job matching measures implemented by the Labour Affairs Bureau.
The statement noted that as of late last week there were more than 7,200 job vacancies on offer in the “Local Job Vacancies” column on the DSAL website, involving more than 240 types of work, indicating an “adequate” supply of job vacancies in the local market.
This undated handout photo provided by the Labour Affairs Bureau (DSAL) on Friday shows workers on a construction site.
