The average monthly regular wage in October gained 2.63 percent from a year earlier to NT$46,455, while the average total monthly wage — including overtime pay, performance-based commissions and bonuses — increased 3.41 percent to NT$53,227, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
The data represented a mild slowdown from September — when companies issued bonuses in observance of the Mid-Autumn Festival — but supported a continued improvement that beat inflation, Census Department Deputy Director Tan Wen-ling (譚文玲) said at a news conference in Taipei.
In the first 10 months of this year, the average real monthly wage and the average total monthly wage picked up 0.5 percent and 1.82 percent each to NT$46,371 and NT$61,529 respectively, after factoring in consumer price hikes for the same period, Tan said.
Photo: Hou Cheng-hsu, Taipei Times
Improving business underpinned the wage hikes as evidenced by the amount of overtime hours, which hit 24.3 hours per month at local makers of electronic components, the strongest in 51 years, she said.
“Chip demand from artificial intelligence [AI], high-performance computing and cloud services is gaining momentum without any signs of mitigation” she said.
Taiwan is home to the world’s major suppliers of advanced chips used in AI, she said.
Wage increases were most evident at financial institutes at 6 percent, followed by shipping and warehousing service providers at 3.58 percent and real-estate brokers at 3.36 percent, the DGBAS said.
The median wage — a better gauge of typical regular pay as it is not skewed by extremes of high or low wages — stood at NT$37,244, an increase of 2.88 percent from a year earlier, it said.
The monthly figure for workers with an undergraduate education was NT$39,277 and grew to NT$64,044 for workers with graduate diplomas, it said.
Male workers had higher median wages of NT$38,862 a month than female workers’ NT$35,183, it said.
People aged below 30 and above 65 had lower wages of NT$30,867 and NT$37,794 a month respectively, it said, citing a lack of experience for the former group and age for the latter.
Elsewhere, Kelvin Lau (劉建恆), senior economist at Standard Chartered Bank in Hong Kong, yesterday said that the AI craze might continue to drive Taiwan’s GDP growth, which would reach 2.3 percent next year, from this year’s estimated 4.2 percent.
US technology giants have indicated plans to step up AI spending, which would benefit Taiwanese firms on the supply chain, he said during a video conference.
However, non-tech products would remain weighed, by an expected economic slowdown in the US, China and Europe, he said.
The upcoming administration of US president-elect Donald Trump would raise tariffs on Chinese goods and indirectly affect Taiwanese firms, he said.
Taiwan’s strong trade surplus against the US could fuel tensions and it could seek appeasement by increasing purchases of agricultural products and military weapons from the US, he added.
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