In today's job market, there is a long line of job vacancies waiting to be filled, and a long line of jobseekers waiting to be hired. Unfortunately, the two lines just don't intersect.
Not too long ago, when the Taipei city government was recruiting 330 sanitation workers, there were more than 3,000 applicants--including eight university graduates, eighty-seven with junior college degrees, and more than a thousand who had completed senior high or vocational school. About the same time, the same thing was happening in southern Taiwan. A Kaohsiung resident who had a master's degree in electrical engineering from an American university applied for a position as a city sanitation worker that required only a junior high school education. The 28-year-old young man was put on a waiting list and would have to wait at least seven years to join the squad--which already had ten workers with university degrees.
Some think there is no need to make a fuss about this. "There has to be a reasonable distribution of high-, mid-, and low -level manpower," says Sun-der Yang (楊松德), Deputy Director-General of the Employment and Vocational Training Administration (EVTA) under the Council of Labor Affairs (CLA). "The traditional mindset that those who have received higher education can only take jobs that have a high social status and a handsome salary has been changing, and there is nothing wrong if someone wants to earn his bread with his sweat."
There certainly isn't anything wrong if these overqualified people are happy with what they do and can even gain a sense of achievement from it. Many people, nevertheless, still wonder why they are willing to take jobs with poor, risk-filled work environments and slim chances of promotion or pay increases.
A reasonable and direct answer that comes to some people's minds is that there simply isn't enough demand in the job market, and that overqualified applicants don't have many choices. But statistics don't agree with this theory. Instead, they have shown that there are actually plenty of jobs waiting to be filled. For the past decade, there have always been more job openings than the number of applicants in the CLA's public employment services. The demand was sometimes two to three times higher than the supply. Last year, for instance, the CLA's public employment service had more than 413,000 vacancies, while only about 167,000 people applied for jobs.
Within the CLA's vacancies, white-collar needs are considerably greater than blue-collar. (The CLA defines "white -collar positions" as executives and managers, professionals, technicians and clerks. "Blue-collar positions" include those in agriculture, forestry, fishing, crafts and related trades, as well as plant and machine operators, and manual laborers.) As recently as June, 1998, there were about 62,000 white-collar vacancies but only 13,000 blue-collar. The CLA had 15,000 applicants for the white-collar vacancies, and 6,600 for the blue-collar vacancies. The number of openings for professionals and managerial personnel was six times higher than the number of applicants.
Sun-der Yang points out that economic development has a great influence on the structure of the job market. When the Nationalist government first moved to Taiwan, most of the island's workforce was in agriculture. As the island started its industrial development, the workforce moved from rice-paddies to factories. And when the government, in January 1995, approved the APROC plan to develop Taiwan into a regional operations center or a sci-tech island, job opportunities in relevant businesses became the hottest on the market. In the process of development, hundreds of thousands of local blue -collar workers were replaced by foreign laborers, and many jobs became automated. Labor-intensive industries have moved out because of Taiwan's increasing production costs, and those that have stayed are having a difficult time because of the general economic downturn.
A shrinking blue-collar market, nevertheless, is not necessarily bad. Christina Ongg (翁靜玉), general manager of Career, a bi-weekly magazine that provides employment information and services, sees in this an indication of further economic development. "I see manpower as a form of merchandise. We should upgrade Taiwan's manpower just as we've been upgrading our other products," she says. "Leave the blue-collar work to imported laborers, and let local people do the managerial or hi-tech jobs."
From a cost-effectiveness point of view, Ongg also believes it best if the government liberalizes the foreign blue-collar market. Housekeepers are an example. A hard-working imported housekeeper is paid NT$15,000 (US$435) a month, while a local one is paid at least NT$30,000 (US$870). Even if someone insists on hiring a local housekeeper, there is a good chance that there won't be any applicants, because few locals are interested in working as full-time housekeepers. Ongg points out that Taiwan's population is becoming more highly educated and that fewer people are now willing to take blue-collar jobs. The result, she reasons, is that the blue-collar supply has not been keeping up with the demand.
Although statistics say that blue-collar vacancies have a higher supply than do white-collar vacancies, this is not to imply that employers have an easier time recruiting blue-collar workers. Currently, local jobseekers--be they blue-collar or white collar--are quite picky about the jobs they choose. A first glance even tempts us to infer that not many of them showed much interest in being anything but city sanitation workers. In the past three years, the CLA's employment service has had a placement rate between 41 and 43 percent. A more detailed figure in June, 1998 by the CLA employment service shows that only 1,600 out of 6,300 jobseekers were placed in the more than 30,000 vacancies for technicians and professionals, and only 600 of the 2,600 applicants were placed in the 5,400 vacancies for plant and machine operators and assembly-line workers.
The main reason applicants can't find jobs and employers can't fill vacancies can be summed up as follows: in terms of qualifications, age, pay, work environment, time, and place, what job seekers require and can offer does not match what employers require and can offer. "It's not a one-way decision like buying a computer or something, for which you choose according to your own necessity and ability," Sun-der Yang says. "When it comes to employment, there has to be a fit between the necessities and abilities of both parties."
Christina Ongg also finds that there are actually a lot more openings than jobseekers. "It's not that people can't find jobs, but that they can't find the jobs they want," she says. "Currently, there is a long line of jobseekers waiting to be hired and also a longer line of vacancies waiting to be filled. The problem is, the overlap between the two is small." From the employment information Career collects, there is little difficulty for jobseekers--if they don't mind selling cars, real-estate, life insurance, or even credit cards. But braving the summer sun and winter rain to visit customers, however, doesn't seem to meet many people's job expectations--one of which is to sit in an air-conditioned office and to work for a high salary.
Given the foregoing, where exactly are the businesses in which employees get to work in air-conditioned offices and collect handsome paychecks? A CLA survey shows that, for a long time, the financial industry has been a very popular line of work. Passing a bank's entrance examination, however, is usually even more difficult than passing Taiwan's college entrance examination. Christina Ongg points out that this is mostly for the sake of money. Currently, the monthly pay for a bank employee with a university degree usually starts at around NT$30,000 (US$870)--which is two to eight thousand higher than what employees in other businesses start at. But Ongg suggests that those seeking a higher starting-point should also take into consideration that there are usually fewer promotional opportunities in the financial industry than in other businesses.
Because of Taiwan's sci-tech development, the industry has become the most promising line of work in the past several years in Taiwan. The starting pay for an entry-level engineer with a relevant university degree is around NT$35,000 (US$1,014) per month--but this is mere pocket money when the market is good. "The real benefit for working in a hi-tech firm is the company's stocks and bonuses," Ongg explains. "Employees count their company stocks by centimeters instead of shares." Ongg also noted that those with relevant educational backgrounds and work experience are not the only ones who want to get in. She knows many young women who have given up high-paying jobs (as, for example, flight attendants) to work as operators or secretaries at hi-tech companies. "They don't care if they earn less than they did in their former jobs," Ongg says. "Their main motivation in the high-tech companies is to find themselves rich, young husbands."
Judging by the number of expensive imported cars in the Hsinchu Science-based Industrial Park, the chances for these women are not too bad--or at least they were not too bad during the first half of this year, when the market was still good and when every company was aggressively recruiting new talent for expansion. But because of the decline of the overall economy, business in Taiwan's hi-tech industries is also shrinking. When the market is not good, employers re-examine their manpower costs and make adjustments. Some companies have been taking a recruitment-freeze approach, and some are already laying off staff. Such layoffs often start at both ends of the personnel ladder. At one end, senior staff whose productivity cannot justify their high salaries are laid off, or else they are encouraged to take early retirement. The vacancies are then filled by temporary professionals introduced by human-resource companies. These temps are expensive, but the employers are reassured of their productivity and don't have to worry about paying their retirement pensions. At the other end, enterprises stop recruiting inexperienced workers that the companies have to spend time and money to train. When young people can't enter the line of work they like, many of them choose to earn their livings by taking temporary jobs such as driving cabs.
The hi-tech industry is not the only one that has been re-examining its personnel policy. All--including government agencies--have been reforming their personnel structure. Many government servants, including senior military officers, are in their early fifties or even late forties, and are still productive when they retire from government. In fact, personnel reform is a good way to cut costs and sharpen the competitive edge. It is the timing of the government's administrative reform that worries observers. If the economy is good, these people can create a second career in the private sector; but right now, it is not likely that Taiwan's private companies can afford to absorb these people.
Based on her ten years of experience in employment services, Ongg predicts that, adding all these factors together, it is feasible that the job market will soon enter an ice age. Jobseekers won't be able to enter the hottest occupations, and employers won't be able to find the employees they want. The only survivors will be experienced experts with professional skills or management abilities. But even for them, the competition will be much tougher. "For specialized and experienced people, employers double their salaries while tripling their workload," she says. "As for those young calves who are picky when it comes to jobs, I guess there are going to be a lot more yellow cabs on the street."