Amid a financial tsunami that has battered enterprises across the world, companies in Taiwan’s high-tech, financial and conventional sectors have all been hard hit with many forced to scale down or shut down their operations, the council indicated.

Some companies, however, have withstood the strain and tried hard to retain job opportunities for workers, using flexible measures such as cutting salaries and forcing workers to take paid or unpaid leave instead of laying them off, the council said.

Despite their efforts, the council predicted that layoffs this year will easily exceed last year’s total. In the first seven months of 2008, local businesses dismissed around 13,000 workers, compared to 14,000 in all of 2007.

In September alone, about 145,000 people lost their work, a 10.87 percent rise from 131,000 in August, mainly as a result of private sector downsizing, CLA statistics showed.

The council predicted that the unemployment rate for October, which will be made public in the coming days,would exceed September’s level of 4.27 percent — or about 460,000 people.

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