Despite rising unemployment and shrinking paychecks, a recent survey by the Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) showed that average salaries across all industries and job functions last year were slightly lower than those of 2008.
The annual survey of more than 9,000 employees’ salary levels nationwide found the average monthly salary across all industries was NT$35,895 last year, a slight dip compared with the average of NT$36,564 in 2008.
The average monthly salary for entry-level workers across all industries was NT$23,896, slightly lower than 2008’s figure of NT$24,061.
Cheng Wen-yuan (鄭文淵), director of the council’s Statistics Department, offered one explanation for the seeming paradox in salary levels dropping even though the economy is doing better.
“In 2008, the council’s survey was conducted in July, before the collapse of Lehman Brothers, so salary levels were at pre-financial crisis levels. In 2009, the survey was conducted in August, when the economy was only starting to get its strength back,” he said.
One of the council’s job-creation initiatives — a series of government-subsidized internship programs — have been criticized by some academics and labor groups for causing a drop in salaries for new graduates, but the council said that these programs had not contributed to the decline in entry-level salaries.
However, the steepest drops in entry-level salaries occurred for workers whose degrees were obtained from four-year universities or vocational or training schools, which were exactly the groups the internship programs were targeted at.
The survey showed that on average, entry-level workers with a university diploma saw their monthly paychecks shrink by 1.46 percent to NT$26,175 last year from NT$26,563 in 2008.
Vocational or training school graduates saw a 1.34 percent drop to NT$23,588 from NT$23,908.
The survey also found that airplane pilots, earning an average of NT$164,138 per month, topped the list of salaries.
Actuaries came in second at NT$160,411 per month, followed by professional athletes (NT$117,306), physicians (NT$99,915) and ships supervisors (NT$93,932).
Restaurant waiter/waitress was the No. 1 in jobs that paid the least (NT$14,995), followed by gas station attendants (NT$16,648), kitchen staff (NT$17,612), entertainment establishment employees (NT$17,913) and bartenders (NT$18,369).
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