Region – does low UE mean labour market tightness?

I've been working on this the last couple of weeks, which unfortunately means the relevance has been taken over by events. But if you are keen to learn something about how the region's economies work, and want a distraction from the ongoing market carnage, you should find the slides interesting. With labour market data so patchy in China, the analysis focuses only includes the other economies, with the focus being Korea and Taiwan. It has four parts:

1. The puzzle. There's labour market tightness everywhere, but the headline data look most extreme in Korea, with employment increasing strongly since the pandemic. And yet, wage growth hasn't risen in Korea, whereas in Japan and Taiwan it has clearly accelerated.
2. Supply. One key to resolving this puzzle is provided by the big increases in participation rates in Korea and Japan. That's been accompanied by a rise in the number of part-time jobs, and as a result, aggregate hours worked in Korea hasn't risen in the same way that employment has. These supply side changes haven't occurred in Taiwan. As a result, demographics are becoming a constraint on labour supply in Taiwan in a way that is only just becoming apparent in Japan.
3. Demand. The stability in the supply side means there's no divergence between employment and working hours in Taiwan. So in this respect, demand looks stronger in Taiwan, and that reflects two factors. First, just as Taiwan's domestic economy was a big loser from the offshoring to China from the 2000s, it is a relative winner as that process ends. Second, Taiwan's cycle has been particularly strong since the pandemic, lifting in a way that isn't at all apparent in Korea.
4. Cycle. That cyclical strength is highly unlikely to survive Trump's recession-inducing tariffs. Perhaps there will be a reprieve from the White House, but that isn't may base case, and anyway, even if there are agreements with the other economies, the whole region will be dragged down if the US and China don't find an off-ramp. Japan shouldn't be as badly affected by the other economies, because it is services rather than exports that have been driving the cycle.