Average real income over the first six months of the year has fallen to a level equal to that posted in 1996, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said on Monday.
Real monthly earnings (including regular and irregular income) averaged NT$42,909 in the first six months of the year as companies adjusted their hiring patterns to cope with the global economic slump, the agency’s figures showed.
That figure is 6.84 percent lower than for the same period a year ago.
The decline in real monthly earnings was the largest such fall since the government began compiling employment-related statistics in 1978.
The January-June average was about the same as the NT$42,744 recorded for the first six months of 1996, the tallies showed.
Officials said that although the number of people employed has risen every month from April to last month, average wages or salaries had continued to decline.
They attributed the decline to the global economic slump and the rise in unconventional employment modes, such as temporary or part-time jobs with hourly based wages.
Cheng Chih-yu (成之約), a professor in National Chengchi University’s Graduate Institute of Labor Research, said that employers, battered by the global economic crunch, have resorted to using temporary or “dispatched” workers to lower costs.
Cheng said, however, that negative growth in the average wage rate would not last forever.
“The negative growth nightmare will be gone as soon as the domestic economy bottoms out from its quagmire and unemployment drops,” Cheng said.
The DGBAS tallies released on Monday show the unemployment rate rose to a record high of 6.07 percent last month and could rise again this month as new entrants to the job market struggle to find work.
The government said the jobless rate would reach its peak last month or this month before gradually easing next month, but Cheng said that the devastation wrought by Typhoon Morakot might exacerbate unemployment.
DGBAS officials estimated that the floods and mudslides triggered by the typhoon affected only 60,000 people and would have little impact on the jobless rate, but Cheng said that the tourism, agriculture and aquaculture sectors would take at least a year to recover from the storm and also suffer job losses.
Cabinet officials said on Monday that the improving global economy and huge amounts of funds and resources that will be channeled into disaster areas for reconstruction projects would help offset some of the typhoon’s negative impact.
“If the post-disaster reconstruction projects are carried out efficiently, it will help solve the jobless problem in disaster areas and boost demand in the building and construction market as well,” an official said.
Taiwan has received more than US$70 million in royalties as of the end of last year from developing the F-16V jet as countries worldwide purchase or upgrade to this popular model, government and military officials said on Saturday. Taiwan funded the development of the F-16V jet and ended up the sole investor as other countries withdrew from the program. Now the F-16V is increasingly popular and countries must pay Taiwan a percentage in royalties when they purchase new F-16V aircraft or upgrade older F-16 models. The next five years are expected to be the peak for these royalties, with Taiwan potentially earning
STAY IN YOUR LANE: As the US and Israel attack Iran, the ministry has warned China not to overstep by including Taiwanese citizens in its evacuation orders The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday rebuked a statement by China’s embassy in Israel that it would evacuate Taiwanese holders of Chinese travel documents from Israel amid the latter’s escalating conflict with Iran. Tensions have risen across the Middle East in the wake of US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran beginning Saturday. China subsequently issued an evacuation notice for its citizens. In a news release, the Chinese embassy in Israel said holders of “Taiwan compatriot permits (台胞證)” issued to Taiwanese nationals by Chinese authorities for travel to China — could register for evacuation to Egypt. In Taipei, the ministry yesterday said Taiwan
Taiwan is awaiting official notification from the US regarding the status of the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) after the US Supreme Court ruled US President Donald Trump's global tariffs unconstitutional. Speaking to reporters before a legislative hearing today, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said that Taiwan's negotiation team remains focused on ensuring that the bilateral trade deal remains intact despite the legal challenge to Trump's tariff policy. "The US has pledged to notify its trade partners once the subsequent administrative and legal processes are finalized, and that certainly includes Taiwan," Cho said when asked about opposition parties’ doubts that the ART was
If China chose to invade Taiwan tomorrow, it would only have to sever three undersea fiber-optic cable clusters to cause a data blackout, Jason Hsu (許毓仁), a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator, told a US security panel yesterday. In a Taiwan contingency, cable disruption would be one of the earliest preinvasion actions and the signal that escalation had begun, he said, adding that Taiwan’s current cable repair capabilities are insufficient. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) yesterday held a hearing on US-China Competition Under the Sea, with Hsu speaking on
RSS