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.
AI SERVER DEMAND: ‘Overall industry demand continues to outpace supply and we are expanding capacity to meet it,’ the company’s chief executive officer said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported that net profit last quarter rose 27 percent from the same quarter last year on the back of demand for cloud services and high-performance computing products. Net profit surged to NT$44.36 billion (US$1.48 billion) from NT$35.04 billion a year earlier. On a quarterly basis, net profit grew 5 percent from NT$42.1 billion. Earnings per share expanded to NT$3.19 from NT$2.53 a year earlier and NT$3.03 in the first quarter. However, a sharp appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar since early May has weighed on the company’s performance, Hon Hai chief financial officer David Huang (黃德才)
The Taiwan Automation Intelligence and Robot Show, which is to be held from Wednesday to Saturday at the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center, would showcase the latest in artificial intelligence (AI)-driven robotics and automation technologies, the organizer said yesterday. The event would highlight applications in smart manufacturing, as well as information and communications technology, the Taiwan Automation Intelligence and Robotics Association said. More than 1,000 companies are to display innovations in semiconductors, electromechanics, industrial automation and intelligent manufacturing, it said in a news release. Visitors can explore automated guided vehicles, 3D machine vision systems and AI-powered applications at the show, along
FORECAST: The greater computing power needed for emerging AI applications has driven higher demand for advanced semiconductors worldwide, TSMC said The government-supported Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) has raised its forecast for this year’s growth in the output value of Taiwan’s semiconductor industry to above 22 percent on strong global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications. In its latest IEK Current Quarterly Model report, the institute said the local semiconductor industry would have output of NT$6.5 trillion (US$216.6 billion) this year, up 22.2 percent from a year earlier, an upward revision from a 19.1 percent increase estimate made in May. The strong showing of the local semiconductor industry largely reflected the stronger-than-expected performance of the integrated circuit (IC) manufacturing segment,
NVIDIA FACTOR: Shipments of AI servers powered by GB300 chips would undergo pilot runs this quarter, with small shipments possibly starting next quarter, it said Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), which supplies artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp chips, yesterday said that AI servers are on track to account for 70 percent of its total server revenue this year, thanks to improved yield rates and a better learning curve for Nvidia’s GB300 chip-based servers. AI servers accounted for more than 60 percent of its total server revenue in the first half of this year, Quanta chief financial officer Elton Yang (楊俊烈) told an online conference. The company’s latest production learning curve of the AI servers powered by Nvidia’s GB200 chips has improved after overcoming key component
RSS