Year-end bonuses are likely to be the smallest in eight years, a survey released yesterday by 104 Job Bank (104人力銀行) found, as 93.8 percent of companies are planning bonuses equivalent to 1.1 months of wages, or 0.05 months less than last year.
It is a tradition in Taiwan for companies to distribute year-end bonuses ahead of the Lunar New Year to show appreciation to their employees.
The results showed that while some sectors have fared well, others have taken a hit from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Photo: Reuters
For 10 consecutive years, financial firms have topped the survey. The results of the 2,086 companies polled between Oct. 26 and Oct. 31 showed that employees of banks, securities firms and insurance companies could look forward to bonuses equivalent to 1.84 months of wages, as rising stock markets across the world have bolstered the businesses’ profits.
Finance firms were followed by semiconductor companies at 1.57 months and construction companies at 1.23 months.
Most hotels and restaurants, which have experienced sluggish business during the two years of the pandemic, have canceled year-end bonuses, although a minority said they were pressing ahead with bonuses equivalent to 0.5 months of wages.
Next year, 39.3 percent of companies would raise wages by an average of 3.1 percent, or NT$1,302, which is a slower pace than the 4 percent pay increase for public-sector employees or the 5 percent hike in the minimum wage.
Software providers, financial institutions and semiconductor firms are running neck and neck with planned wage increases of 3.6 percent, the results showed.
This year, semiconductor firms would offer the highest average employee salaries at NT$921,000, followed by telecoms at NT$839,000 and financial firms at NT$808,000.
The results also showed that 47.7 percent of the companies intended to increase their headcounts by 10 percent.
Semiconductor firms reported the most vacancies, followed by manufacturers of consumer electronics and Internet software companies, the result showed.
South Korea’s equity benchmark yesterday crossed a new milestone just a month after surpassing the once-unthinkable 5,000 mark as surging global memory demand powers the country’s biggest chipmakers. The KOSPI advanced as much as 2.6 percent to a record 6,123, with Samsung Electronics Co and SK Hynix Inc each gaining more than 2 percent. With the benchmark now up 45 percent this year, South Korea’s stock market capitalization has also moved past France’s, following last month’s overtaking of Germany’s. Long overlooked by foreign funds, despite being undervalued, South Korean stocks have now emerged as clear winners in the global market. The so-called “artificial intelligence
‘SEISMIC SHIFT’: The researcher forecast there would be about 1.1 billion mobile shipments this year, down from 1.26 billion the prior year and erasing years of gains The global smartphone market is expected to contract 12.9 percent this year due to the unprecedented memorychip shortage, marking “a crisis like no other,” researcher International Data Corp (IDC) said. The new forecast, a dramatic revision down from earlier estimates, gives the latest accounting of the ongoing memory crunch that is affecting every corner of the electronics industry. The demand for advanced memory to power artificial intelligence (AI) tasks has drained global supply until well into next year and jeopardizes the business model of many smartphone makers. IDC forecast about 1.1 billion mobile shipments this year, down from 1.26 billion the prior
People stand in a Pokemon store in Tokyo on Thursday. One of the world highest-grossing franchises is celebrated its 30th anniversary yesterday.
Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek’s (深度求索) latest AI model, set to be released as soon as next week, was trained on Nvidia Corp’s most advanced AI chip, the Blackwell, a senior official of US President Donald Trump’s administration said on Monday, in what could represent a violation of US export controls. The US believes DeepSeek will remove the technical indicators that might reveal its use of American AI chips, the official said, adding that the Blackwells are likely clustered at its data center in Inner Mongolia, an autonomous region of China. The person declined to say how the US government received
RSS