Average monthly take-home pay in May rose 2.4 percent year-on-year to NT$41,865 (US$1,344), the second-highest increase in 19 years, as firms raised salaries amid a tepid, but stable economy, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
The nation’s export-reliant economy grew 1.71 percent in the first quarter of the year and is expected to quicken the pace each quarter, despite the US-China trade row, the agency said in May.
“Many firms increased pay for employees, accounting for the modest gain in average wages from a year earlier,” DGBAS Deputy Director Pan Ning-hsin (潘寧馨) told a media briefing in Taipei.
Total compensation — including performance-based bonuses and overtime — averaged NT$49,815 per month last year, an increase of 3.48 percent from a year earlier, the agency’s report showed.
Regular wages and total compensations stood at NT$44,043 and NT$52,543 per month for domestic employees, excluding foreign workers, it said, as the migrant workers earn less.
An ongoing economic slowdown has weighed on overtime hours for eight consecutive months for the manufacturing industry and seven months for service-oriented firms, Pan said.
Real-estate brokers fared better, with a 3.32 percent pay raise, while financial and insurance companies reported a 3.59 percent decline, as market corrections weakened business, he said.
For the first five months of this year, take-home wages rose 2.29 percent to NT$41,641 a month, while overall compensation increased 1.79 percent to NT$58,492, the agency said.
The monthly figures eased to NT$40,773 and NT$57,272 after factoring in consumer price hikes, it added.
Employees of electricity and gas suppliers enjoyed the highest total pay — NT$187,262 — followed by real-estate brokers, it said.
“That is because some firms in the sectors issued performance-based bonuses in May,” Pan said.
In other news, the National Treasury Administration last month received NT$481.3 billion in tax revenue, a fractional 0.5 percent increase from a year earlier, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday.
The size of the increase was due to the lingering effect of a business tax hike from 17 to 20 percent, the ministry said.
The revenue from taxes on land value increase rose 9.4 percent to NT$8.2 billion, as property deals picked up 3.6 percent, it said.
However, security transaction taxes fell 42.5 percent to NT$6.1 billion as daily turnover shrank 38.5 percent to NT$118.5 billion, it said.
Cumulative tax revenues for the first six months of the year totaled NT$1.7 trillion, a 2.4 percent increase from the same period last year and ahead of the budget target by 3.4 percent, the ministry said.
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