ABSTRACT
Taiwan is a small island located in the heart of East Asia. This chapter provides an overview of Taiwan's labour market. It discusses work-readiness issues faced by key stakeholders and some recommendations concerning how they may be addressed. For many years, Taiwan's labour market has been plagued by talent shortages. The relatively low labour participation rates could be attributed to several key factors: early retirement, discrimination against female workers, long working hours and low salaries, and young people delaying entering workplace in order to seek further education. Even though the legal retirement age is set at 65 years, the Ministry of Labour's statistics show that the average retirement age in Taiwan is in fact 60 years of age. Lu suggests that, under the influence of Confucianism cultural values, it is common for Taiwanese women to encounter five types of workplace discrimination: superiors disallow menstrual leave, male chauvinism, workplace sexual harassment, employment discrimination against married or pregnant women, and glass ceilings.
