The number of workers required to take unpaid leave exceeded 11,000 this month, with the largest number of new furloughs being in the manufacturing industry. That’s according to statistics released by Taiwan’s Labor Ministry on Wednesday. 

The ministry says 632 companies have furloughed more than 11,000 employees due to the impact of the economic downturn. This is an increase of 56 companies compared with the previous period. 

Ministry official Huang Wei-chen (黃維琛) says that manufacturers currently implementing unpaid leave are concentrated in the machine tool industry and the bicycle component industry, but this time there are also two electronic component manufacturers with 550 and 250 employees furloughed respectively. The 800 employees were required to take off four or five days of unpaid leave per month for a period of three months.

Huang says that manufacturers reported the reason for furloughing workers is due to a reduction of foreign orders. One of the manufacturers required employees to take unpaid leave before the epidemic, and the other began to implement it in the first quarter of this year.