Average monthly take-home pay gained 2.56 percent year-on-year to NT$41,249 (US$1,339) in November last year, as most firms raised their salaries amid a stable economy, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said on Thursday.
The figure was the highest in 19 years for November, as GDP growth expanded 2.89 percent in the first three quarters of last year.
Listed firms reported a 7.33 percent increase in revenue last year on the back of an improved business environment, DGBAS Deputy Director Pan Ning-hsin (潘寧馨) said.
However, many are forecasting a slowdown this year on concerns that the US-China trade dispute would soften demand for technology products, according to various business sentiment surveys.
Total compensation — including performance-based bonuses and overtime pay — averaged NT$46,542 per month last year, an increase of 3.12 percent from a year earlier, the DGBAS said in a report.
Non-regular compensation has advanced at a faster pace than take-home pay as companies prefer to issue bonuses depending on their earnings and employees’ contributions, Pan said.
Firms involved in electricity and gas supply offered the highest pay, with total compensation averaging NT$99,697 a month, followed by electronics manufacturers at NT$71,433, the report said.
Performance-based bonuses and overtime pay helped push up wages at those companies, it said.
Financial services companies ranked third with average monthly compensation of NT$63,932 and the health sector came next at NT$61,506, it said.
The economic pickup also allowed firms to raise staffing levels, with the number of workers rising 1.21 percent to 7.71 million, the report said.
Average overtime in November was 7.9 hours, down 0.1 hour from the same month a year earlier, due to technological advances, it said.
For the first 11 months of last year, monthly take-home pay and total compensation gained 2.61 percent and 3.97 percent to NT$40,939 and NT$52,059 respectively, the DGBAS said, adding that the latter figure was the highest ever recorded.
The gap between take-home pay and total compensation exceeded NT$10,000 during the period and is likely to grow wider this month and next month when most local companies pay their year-end bonuses, Pan said.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to