The median income of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) employees worldwide last year was NT$1.63 million (US$54,993), while chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) earned 180 times that amount, or about NT$293 million.
The median income figure included base salaries, allowances, cash bonuses and profit sharing, but excluded pensions and benefits, according to statistics released on Wednesday in TSMC’s Corporate Social Responsibility Report.
Factoring in pensions and other benefits, TSMC last year paid its global employees a total of NT$109.9 billion in compensation, the report showed.
The median salary increased 3.2 percent from 2018, when it was NT$1.58 million, and total compensation to global employees rose 1.6 percent from NT$108.2 billion over the same period.
TSMC employed 51,297 people at the end of last year, of which 34,137 were managers, professionals and administrative staff, and the remaining 17,160 were production line technicians, the report said.
More than 80 percent of TSMC’s managers and professionals had a master’s degree or higher, the report showed.
About 90 percent of TSMC employees are based in Taiwan and the rest are based overseas.
TSMC shares on Wednesday rose 0.79 percent to close at NT$317.5 in Taipei trading. The stock this year has declined 7.4 percent, compared with the broader market’s 11.67 percent fall.
Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves fell below the US$600 billion mark at the end of last month, with the central bank reporting a total of US$596.89 billion — a decline of US$8.6 billion from February — ending a three-month streak of increases. The central bank attributed the drop to a combination of factors such as outflows by foreign institutional investors, currency fluctuations and its own market interventions. “The large-scale outflows disrupted the balance of supply and demand in the foreign exchange market, prompting the central bank to intervene repeatedly by selling US dollars to stabilize the local currency,” Department of Foreign
ENERGY ISSUES: The TSIA urged the government to increase natural gas and helium reserves to reduce the impact of the Middle East war on semiconductor supply stability Chip testing and packaging service provider ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投控) yesterday said it planned to invest more than NT$100 billion (US$3.15 billion) in building a new advanced chip testing facility in Kaohsiung to keep up with customer demand driven by the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. That would be included in the company’s capital expenditure budget next year, ASE said. There is also room to raise this year’s capital spending budget from a record-high US$7 billion estimated three months ago, it added. ASE would have six factories under construction this year, another record-breaking number, ASE chief operating officer Tien Wu
Intel Corp is joining Elon Musk’s long-shot effort to develop semiconductors for Tesla Inc, Space Exploration Technologies Corp and xAI, marking a surprising twist in the chipmaker’s comeback bid. Intel would help the Terafab project “refactor” the technology in a chip factory, the company said on Tuesday in a post on X, Musk’s social media platform. That is a stage in the development process that typically helps make chips more powerful or reliable. The chipmaker’s shares jumped 4.2 percent to US$52.91 in New York trading on Tuesday. The Terafab project is a grand plan by Musk to eventually manufacture his own chips for
For weeks now, the global tech industry has been waiting for a major artificial intelligence (AI) launch from DeepSeek (深度求索), seen as a benchmark for China’s progress in the fast-moving field. More than a year has passed since the start-up put Chinese AI on the map in early last year with a low-cost chatbot that performed at a similar level to US rivals. However, despite reports and rumors about its imminent release, DeepSeek’s next-generation “V4” model is nowhere in sight. Speculation is also swirling over the geopolitical implications of which computer chips were chosen to train and power the new