Nearly 80 percent of employers in Taiwan plan to raise wages next year amid continued optimism that the local economy is on the road to recovery, according to a survey released on Monday by an online job bank yes123.
In addition, the average wage hike employers have agreed to for next year is to hit 4.7 percent, the survey showed.
The planned wage hike is greater than the average of 3.9 percent this year, the job bank said.
Many employers expressed optimism about the local economy after the government and several leading think tanks forecast that the nation’s GDP would grow more than 2 percent, it said.
The Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics last month forecast that the GDP would grow 2.58 percent this year and 2.29 percent next year.
The survey found that 52.4 percent of the respondents agreed their operations for next year would be better than this year, with 42.7 percent of them saying that their operations next year would stay unchanged from this year.
A total of 79.3 percent of the respondents said they are planning to increase wages next year, and among those planning wage hikes, 61 percent said the hikes would depend on employee performance, while 18.3 percent said that all their employees would get raises, irrespective of performance.
The information technology sector showed the greatest willingness to raise wages, with 91.4 percent of employers in the sector planning to raise salaries, ahead of the financial/insurance/accounting sector (90.9 percent), the healthcare/biotech sector (88.9 percent), the transportation/logistics/warehousing sector (84 percent) and the manufacturing sector (80.5 percent), the survey found.
In addition to wage hikes, many employers are willing to boost welfare for their employees, with 40.1 percent of the employers polled saying that they are planning to raise travel subsidies, 25.9 percent saying they would allow employees to have flexible work schedules, 23.8 percent saying they would offer free snacks and 22.2 percent saying they would provide transportation subsidies.
The survey, conducted from Dec. 1 to Tuesday last week, collected 984 valid questionnaires and has a margin of error of 3.12 percentage points.
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