The average monthly wage for new graduates last year increased by 2.9 percent from a year earlier to NT$35,000, while the gender wage gap among first-time employees shrank to 8 percent, the Ministry of Labor said yesterday.
Female first-time workers had a base wage of NT$34,000, or 92 percent of the NT$37,000 base wage for male first-time workers, the ministry said, adding that the gap dropped 2.3 percentage points from 2022.
However, among first-time workers with a master’s degree, women earned NT$45,000, compared with NT$52,000 for men, ministry data showed.
Photo: Taipei Times
The reason for the greater gap for those with master’s degrees was that about 61 percent of men with graduate degrees had studied information science, engineering or related subjects, while the rate was only 24.8 percent for women, the ministry said.
The average wage for people in their first job was NT$35,000, up 2.9 percent compared with 2022, the ministry said, adding that the amount was only 72.7 percent of the monthly average wage of fulltime workers in the industrial and service industries.
First-time workers with at most a high-school education earned NT$28,000, college graduates earned NT$33,000 and people with graduate degrees earned NT$49,000 on average, the data showed.
The data showed that 23.4 percent of first-time workers started at base wage level, down 0.7 percentage points from 2022.
The data showed that 58.3 percent of first-time workers starting on a base wage were those with high-school or equivalent education, while 23.9 percent were college graduates and 4.4 percent had graduate degrees.
Among those with at most a college degree, first-time workers last year in the medical and social welfare sectors had the best monthly wages, at NT$38,000, with those in the education sector second at NT$37,000, the data showed.
Among people with master’s degrees, first-time workers in the information technology sector earned the highest wages at NT$57,000, with construction second at NT$55,000, the data showed.
The manufacturing, retail and wholesale industries had the most first-time workers, at 18.4 percent, while the medicine and social welfare industries were second at 11.84 percent, the data showed.
The data showed that 9.1 percent of first-time workers were in the specialized and technical services industries, 8.1 percent were in the hospitality industry and 7.8 percent were in the education industry.
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