More Taiwanese college grads become vendors

Low wages and high unemployment rate have prompted more Taiwanese college graduates into peddling, according to Taiwan's statistics authority.

The latest report on Taiwan's street peddlers indicates that college graduates made up 11.58 percent of the trade in 2013, up from 7.18 percent five years before.

A statistics official said holders of college degrees or above had increased fastest among new vendors, and many of them had been attracted by the job's higher level of freedom.

The number of street vendors in Taiwan hit a record 491,000 in 2013, or one in every 20 employed people was engaged in peddling, the report said.