Employee training and human capital in Taiwan

Although globalization, liberalization and the development of the network economy have undoubtedly enhanced the competitiveness of the Taiwanese economy, with the island's citizens benefiting enormously from lower prices on a wide range of products, the downside has been the obvious increase in unemployment, and the accompanying instability of employment amongst the island's remaining workforce. Policies adopted by the Taiwanese government to tackle this and improve human capital in the human resources development (HRD) process on the island, give rise to many questions, however, such as whether employee training programs can really provide Taiwan's workforce with sustainable employability and whether such programs can effectively reduce the probability of unemployment. They also raise the questions of whether employee training programs can help unemployed workers to shorten their unemployment period, thus reducing the overall number of structurally-unemployed workers, and whether these programs can ultimately lead to increases in overall income levels for successful trainees. These are the questions to be investigated in this paper.