Employees in the financial services and insurance industries saw their salaries fall the most among workers in the nation’s major industries last year, according to a survey released by online human resources advisory firm 1111 Job Bank (1111人力銀行) on Saturday.
The survey showed that the average salary cut in the financial sector last year was 3.06 percent, followed by the construction and real-estate sector with a 2.58 percent reduction and the travel, leisure and sports industry with a 1.5 percent cut.
The financial sector has been affected by a downturn in interest rates, which has narrowed the interest spread, affecting many banks’ bottom lines, 1111 Job Bank vice president Daniel Lee (李大華) said.
In addition, several foreign financial firms have withdrawn from Taiwan or cut their workforces, dealing another blow to the nation’s financial sector and making employers more cautious about the market outlook, Lee said.
Lee said that the local real-estate market suffered a drop in residential and commercial property transactions on the back of the government’s measures to rein in rocketing home prices, while the local travel industry felt the pinch resulting from a fall in the number of Chinese visitors.
However, workers in some other industries received raises last year, with salaries in the transportation and logistics, as well as the warehousing and trading industries, up 2.8 percent year-on-year, ahead of the law, accounting and consulting services sector, which saw a 1.63 percent increase, and the mass communications industry with a 0.39 percent rise, the survey showed.
Lee said that the nation’s transportation and logistics sector benefited from a boom in the e-commerce segment, which boosted demand for employees.
Pilots in Taiwan were offered the highest starting salaries of NT$102,765 per month last year, ahead of medical doctors at NT$82,850 and dentists at NT$81,478, according to the survey, which collected 321,334 valid questionnaires with a confidence level of 95 percent and a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
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