The impact of the financial crisis on the local job market is even worse than that caused by the dotcom bubble of 2000 and will take at least two years to recover, the Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD) said Sunday. Taiwan's average unemployment rate in the first six months of this year reached 5.73 percent, up 1.86 percent from the same period of last year and exceeding the 1.15-percent increase between the first half of 2001 and 2002 after the dotcom bubble burst. The figures signal the even stronger impact of the financial debacle on the job market, according to the CEPD. Men bore the brunt of the global financial turmoil because between January and June, the average employment among male workers was down by 134,000, compared with a decrease of 14,000 among females, the CEPD said. The unemployment rate is expected to continue rising in July and August when new graduates enter the job market and will then begin to show signs of improvement after September, when a global economic recovery is expected, according to the CEPD. However, the CEPD predicted that the employment situation will not improve greatly until the second quarter of 2010 at the earliest and said a booster shot is needed to help with economic recovery if Taiwan aims to bring the unemployment rate down to the average of 3.19 percent recorded in 2006 and 2007. The economy recorded a negative 2.17 percent growth in 2000 and the nation's business cycle indicators flashed blue for the eighth straight time during the period, as it suffered badly from the collapse of the dotcom bubble. It took three quarters before the economy recovered from the recession and two years before the employment market was restored to its previous level, according to the CEPD. Reeling from the global financial crunch that began in the last half of 2008, Taiwan's economy and gross domestic product (GDP) had both stayed in negative territory for four quarters as of the second quarter of this year. As part of efforts to tackle unemployment, especially among middle-aged and elderly people, the Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) has urged job seekers in those groups to find a new job before quitting their old one. Huang Meng-ju, head of a CLA-affiliated employment service center in central Taiwan, attributed the relatively high unemployment rate among middle-aged and elderly people to their general unwillingness to lower their expectations about their jobs. 