Average monthly take-home pay in July rose at the slowest annual pace in four years to NT$42,481 (US$1,440.72), while total wages, including overtime and performance-based compensation, climbed 4.46 percent to NT$55,505, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
The labor force expanded by 37,000 people, or 0.47 percent, from a month earlier to 7.94 million, as the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic weakened, the statistics agency said in a report.
The labor force is still 43,000 people smaller than a year earlier, it said, adding that the difference widened to an 11-year high of 0.53 percent compared with pre-pandemic levels.
IMPROVEMENT
The figures mean that the labor market continued to take a hit from the pandemic, although things have started to improve, DGBAS Deputy Director Chen Hui-hsin (陳惠欣) said.
“It will take a while for Taiwan to fully recover from the health crisis by measure of hiring activity,” Chen told a news conference.
Labor accession rate was 2.81 percent, up 0.78 percentage points from a month earlier, but down 0.33 percentage points from a year earlier, the report said.
Attrition rates gained 0.42 percentage points from a month earlier to 2.34 percent, as some employers did not replace staff who quit, although improving business sentiment allowed 62,000 people to rejoin the workforce, mostly in the wholesale, retail and manufacturing sectors, it said.
In July, total working hours amounted to 181 hours, a drop of 1.9 hours from a year earlier, the report said.
FLIGHTS RESUME
By sector, airline employees enjoyed highest monthly take-home pay of NT$68,792 after some companies resumed flights previously canceled to cope with a sharp decline in business linked to the pandemic, the report said.
Workers at electricity and gas suppliers had the highest total monthly wage, which more than doubled to NT$220,749 from a month earlier on the back of performance-based compensations, it said.
Staff at electronics firms reported the second-highest overall monthly pay of NT$106,416 for similar reasons, the report said.
However, people working at machinery vendors, publishers and leisure facilities saw fractional declines in their monthly take-home pay, it said.
For the first seven months of this year, monthly take-home pay grew 1.43 percent to NT$42,303, while overall wages advanced 1.48 percent to NT$57,211, the report said.
Monthly take-home pay and overall wages climbed to 1.71 percent and 1.76 percent respectively after factoring in declines in consumer prices over the same period, the agency said.
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