Annual compensation for employees in Taiwan last year increased 3.6 percent from a year earlier as employers handed out larger bonuses, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
Total employee compensation — regular salary, non-regular earnings and benefits such as labor and health insurance premiums, severance pay and pension contributions — paid by employers was NT$731,000 last year, an increase of NT$25,000 from 2017, the agency said.
The DGBAS’ definition of non-regular earnings includes year-end bonuses, bonuses for festivals, performance bonuses and allowances.
Regular salaries made up 67.2 percent of the average compensation last year, down from 67.9 percent in 2017, the DGBAS said.
Non-regular earnings increased 0.9 percentage points year-on-year to make up a record 18.8 percent of average compensation, it said.
Last year’s higher compensation reflected in part the good year that employers had in 2017 — when the nation’s economy grew 3.08 percent in real terms — leading companies to pay higher year-end bonuses and performance bonuses, DGBAS Census Department Deputy Director Pan Ning-hsin (潘寧馨) said.
While regular salaries last year increased only 2.6 percent on average, non-regular earnings increased 8.5 percent, or NT$10,752 per employee, DGBAS figures showed.
Benefits rose 2 percent on average, but made up 14 percent of the average compensation, down from 14.2 percent in 2017, data showed.
Because they are part of employers’ operating costs, benefits are likely to rise, as the nation is doing more to protect workers, Pan said.
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