Average monthly wages in April rose 2.77 percent from a year earlier to NT$46,321, while total pay — including overtime compensation, performance-based commissions and bonuses — increased 3.67 percent to NT$53,871, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
Census Department Deputy Director Chen Hui-hsin (陳惠欣) attributed the improvement to an ongoing economic recovery that enables local firms to raise wages and perks for their employees.
Taiwan’s economy in the first quarter expanded 6.56 percent, bouncing back from a 3.49 percent contraction a year earlier, thanks to robust demand from US technology titans for electronics used in artificial intelligence applications.
Photo: Clare Cheng, Taipei Times
However, the recovery is not broad-based, as most sectors remain weighed by tepid end-market demand, government data showed.
Video content creators, financial service providers and telecoms offered relatively high regular monthly wages of NT$67,317 and NT$70,733, while hotels, restaurants and hair salons had relatively low monthly take-home pay of about NT$35,000, Chen said.
The labor accession rate shed 0.2 percentage points to 2.16 percent in April, while the dropout rate decreased 0.31 percentage points to 2.1 percent, meaning more people joined the labor force, the DGBAS said.
In the first four months, average monthly wages were NT$46,105, a 2.39 percent increase from the same period last year, while total monthly wages rose 3.62 percent to NT$67,856, the agency said.
Both figures remained in positive territory, as wages improved rapidly enough to offset the effect of inflation, Chen said.
The consumer price index in April grew a mild 1.95 percent, returning briefly to below the central bank’s 2 percent target.
Chen hesitated to say for certain if regular monthly wage hikes would continue to beat inflation, as firms would adjust compensation terms in line with their business visibility.
Sixty-eight percent of workers in Taiwan did not make monthly take-home pay in excess of NT$50,000, because service providers hire far more workers than advanced technology companies, she said.
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