Taipei, Sept. 6 (CNA) Nine in 10 workers in Taiwan are not satisfied with their salaries and three in four have not received a raise this year, according to an online job bank survey released Wednesday.
The annual 1111 Jobs Bank survey on the salaries of Taiwanese workers found that 90 percent of respondents were “unsatisfied” with their salaries, the highest percentage in five years.
Of those surveyed, 75 percent said their salary had remained stagnant this year, while only a quarter said they had received a raise, with the average being NT$2,117 (US$66) per month.
In terms of the reason for the stagnant wages this year, 61.8 percent of survey respondents said their company did not have a system in place to regularly increase employee salaries.
Meanwhile, 18.6 percent of people believed the reason was related to their company’s financial performance, 16.9 percent said their boss had refused, 13.5 percent said their boss did not like them, and 12.4 percent said they did not have sufficient seniority.
On average, respondents said the longest they had gone without receiving a pay raise was 3.7 years, while 25.5 percent of respondents said they had not received a raise in the past five years, the survey found.
At a press event announcing the survey results, 1111 Job Bank Public Relations manager Tseng Chung-wei (???) said the findings tracked with Taiwan’s slowing economic growth, which has made companies more cautious about increasing labor costs.
Taiwan’s government trimmed its 2023 GDP growth forecast last month to 1.61 percent, the lowest level in eight years, Tseng said.
On Friday, a Ministry of Labor committee is expected to decide whether or not to recommend raising the country’s minimum wage next year. The Cabinet, meanwhile, has approved a 4 percent raise for public sector workers in 2024, which still needs to be approved by the Legislature.
The 1111 Job Bank survey was conducted between Aug. 14 and Sept. 4 and based on 1,084 valid samples from working adults in Taiwan. It had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.98 percent and a 95 percent level of confidence.
