The number of workers hired in the manufacturing and service sectors in February edged down 0.12 percent, or by 9,000 people, as firms shed headcount to cope with a slow business season, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
The overall number of employees stood at 8.16 million, with hotels and restaurants cutting 4,000 staff members, and manufacturers letting go 3,000, DGBAS said.
Compared with a year earlier, the pool grew by 0.25 percent, or an addition of 21,000 workers, as many employers emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic, it said.
Photo: CNA
It is unclear if the decline in workers had to do with seasonal or economic factors, DGBAS Census Department Deputy Director Chen Hui-hsin (陳惠欣) said, adding that manufacturers tended to hire fewer workers in February and increased their staff in the following month.
Employee gains last month could have ranged from 1,000 to 7,000, although conclusions cannot be reached until official data is released, Chen said.
Overtime hours, another gauge of industry performance, fell by 0.4 hours per day in February from a year earlier, shrinking eight months in a row, DGBAS data showed.
The manufacturing sector is the backbone of Taiwan’s export-oriented economy, with the nation home to the world’s largest suppliers of electronics used in smartphones, notebook computers, wearables, televisions and vehicles.
Employers usually cut overtime hours before exploring other measures to control personnel costs during downturns, Chen said.
The accession rate, which measures the number of new workers added to payrolls, rose 0.08 percentage points year-on-year to 2.15 percent, DGBAS said.
The dropout rate, which reflects the number of workers who exit the job market, declined 0.09 percentage points to 2.27 percent, it added.
Average monthly take-home pay in February grew 2.51 percent year-on-year to NT$45,044, but dropped 0.71 percent from January, it said.
Total monthly wages — including performance-based commissions, bonuses and overtime compensation — advanced by 7.14 percent to NT$52,705, as the tourism sector emerged from COVID-19 restrictions, it said.
In the first two months, average take-home pay gained 2.39 percent to NT$45,206, but contracted 0.34 percent after factoring in higher inflation, Chen said.
Taiwanese employees on average received NT$75,688, or 1.63 months of salary, for year-end bonuses this year, led by 3.39 months at financial and insurance companies and 2.12 months at property-related companies, DGBAS said.
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
RSS