The average monthly wage in June rose 3 percent from a year earlier to NT$46,486, while the average total monthly wage — including overtime pay, performance-based commissions and bonuses — gained 3.17 percent to NT$55,447, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
The improvement mainly came from pay increases, the statistics agency said, adding that it stayed in positive territory even after factoring in inflation.
The agency said it expects the advance to be sustainable, as the nation steadily emerges from a global economic slowdown.
Photo: Lam Yik Fei, Bloomberg
Taiwan has seen real wages grow for three months in a row, indicating that people have enjoyed the benefits of economic growth, the DGBAS said.
The economy is picking up steam, after expanding 6.5 percent and 5.09 percent year-on-year in the first and second quarters respectively, it said.
With GDP forecast to grow 3.99 percent this year, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) last month announced plans to raise wages for government employees by 3 percent next year.
The premier urged the private sector to follow suit in raising wages.
However, employment data showed that the number of workers hired by manufacturers dropped by 2,000 in June, after ending 21 months of decline in May.
The DGBAS said that there was no need to worry about the mild retreat, as the high sales season for technology products is approaching.
A breakdown by sector showed that financial and insurance companies offered the highest average monthly wage of NT$70,741 in June, followed by video-content creators and telecom operators at NT$67,689, and electricity and gas suppliers at NT$66,911.
Nursery schools and kindergartens paid the lowest regular average wage of NT$30,323 per month, followed by restaurants and hotels at NT$34,609, and other service providers at NT$35,841, it said.
In terms of total compensation, financial and insurance companies also topped the survey at NT$90,631 a month, followed by manufacturers of computers and optical devices at NT$84,392, and electricity and gas suppliers at NT$80,077, it said.
In the first six months, regular monthly wages averaged NT$46,227 while overall compensation stood at NT$64,084, increasing 2.56 percent and 3.74 percent respectively from year-earlier levels, the agency said.
The real pace of gains tapered to 0.28 percent and 1.43 percent each after adjustments for inflation, it said.
Shares of contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) came under pressure yesterday after a report that Apple Inc is looking to shift some orders from the Taiwanese company to Intel Corp. TSMC shares fell NT$55, or 2.4 percent, to close at NT$2,235 on the local main board, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed. Despite the losses, TSMC is expected to continue to benefit from sound fundamentals, as it maintains a lead over its peers in high-end process development, analysts said. “The selling was a knee-jerk reaction to an Intel-Apple report over the weekend,” Mega International Investment Services Corp (兆豐國際投顧) analyst Alex Huang
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to remain Apple Inc’s primary chip manufacturing partner despite reports that Apple could shift some orders to Intel Corp, industry experts said yesterday. The comments came after The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Apple and Intel had reached a preliminary agreement following more than a year of negotiations for Intel to manufacture some chips for Apple devices. Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (台灣經濟研究院) economist Arisa Liu (劉佩真) said TSMC’s advanced packaging technologies, including integrated fan-out and chip-on-wafer-on-substrate, remain critical to the performance of Apple’s A-series and M-series chips. She said Intel and Samsung
TRANSITION: With the closure, the company would reorganize its Taiwanese unit to a sales and service-focused model, Bridgestone said Bridgestone Corp yesterday announced it would cease manufacturing operations at its tire plant in Hsinchu County’s Hukou Township (湖口), affecting more than 500 workers. Bridgestone Taiwan Co (台灣普利司通) said in a statement that the decision was based on the Tokyo-based tire maker’s adjustments to its global operational strategy and long-term market development considerations. The Taiwanese unit would be reorganized as part of the closure, effective yesterday, and all related production activities would be concluded, the statement said. Under the plan, Bridgestone would continue to deepen its presence in the Taiwanese market, while transitioning to a sales and service-focused business model, it added. The Hsinchu
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has approved a capital budget of US$31.28 billion for production expansion to meet long-term development needs during the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. The company’s board meeting yesterday approved the capital appropriation plan for purposes such as the installation of advanced technology capacity and fab construction, the world’s largest contract chipmaker said in a statement. At an earnings conference last month, TSMC forecast that its capital expenditure for this year would be at the higher end of the US$52 billion to US$56 billion range it forecast in January in response to robust demand for 5G, AI and
RSS