Employees in Taiwan saw wages rise in 2021

About 32% of companies in the industrial and service sectors raised wages, with 34.7% of employers in the industrial sector and 28.7% in the service sector increasing wages last year.

These were the results from a DGBAS survey, which also showed that 76.9% of financial and insurance companies last year raised regular wages of employees, followed by 41.7% in the manufacturing industry.

The pay hikes in the financial sector reflected a booming equity market last year, which boosted the profitability of many financial firms, while export-oriented tech companies raised pay as they benefited from robust global demand for emerging technologies, said Chen Hui-hsin, deputy director of the agency’s Census Department.

Among the employers that raised wages, 50.2% based salary increases on employee performance, while 36.0% considered higher profits, 34.5% followed the government’s minimum wage increase, and 16.8% considered the effects of inflation on their workers. 

In the first quarter of the year, 33.6% of employers in the industrial and service sectors said they planned to raise wages, while 67% of companies with a workforce of more than 100 employees had either given pay increases or were planning to do so.

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However, there is growing uncertainty about the domestic economy due to high inflation caused by a spike in commodity prices amid the Ukraine invasion and the surge of local COVID-19 cases, Chen said. 

Whether wages would remain at their new levels and for how long is uncertain, she said, according to Taipei Times.