While inflation has eroded incomes, a performance-based salary policy that has been extensively adopted by firms contributes to wage declines, observers said yesterday, adding that the chance of a reversal in the trend is slim in the foreseeable future.
The nation’s workers earned an average of NT$37,066 a month between January and May, the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics said. The figure, while edging up 1.58 percent year-on-year, marked a negative growth of 2.01 percent after adjustment for inflation of 3.66 percent for the same period.
The inflationary pressure would pose less of a threat if nominal wages increased at a quicker pace, as before 2000, when the gain often exceeded 5 percent but has since slowed down to 1.5 percent.
The figure is unlikely to rise sharply as companies by and large have adopted a performance-based pay system to keep their personnel outlays down in the face of sharp competition at home and abroad.
Ryan Wu (吳睿穎), chief operating officer of Internet-based 1111 Job Bank (1111人力銀行) said almost all domestic service sectors have based their payroll on employee performance since the new pension system took effect two years ago.
Under the system, employers are required to set aside pension funds on a yearly basis, rather than paying a lump sum upon the retirement of employees. The measure is designed to prevent companies from shutting down before their employees have the chance to collect their pensions.
A merit pay policy allows employers to raise wages and provide bonuses for workers who perform well.
“The policy helps save fixed expenses as companies don’t have to give bonuses to all employees or at the same time,” Wu said.
Official statistics show that assorted bonuses account for 20 percent of the wages workers take home regularly.
Wu said a pay raise of less than 3 percent may contribute to real wage declines, after taking inflation into consideration.
Chen Jeng-yi (陳正毅), chairman of Sigma Marketing Co and former spokesman for the General Chamber of Commerce of the ROC (商業總會), said that companies have few incentives to hike wages under the trend of globalization.
Chen said industries had moved their assembly lines to China, Vietnam or other places in recent years because labor costs there were lower.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day