News
Average wages edge up
The government says the island's median annual wage last year edged up 1% to NT$506,000, while the average wage rose 3.02% to a three-year high of NT$67,000.
However, a record 68.31% of 8.13 million workers in the industrial and service sectors did not receive compensation on par with the average amount and 50% missed the median sum.
Officials say those figures show that 4.07 million workers failed to collect NT$42,000 in median monthly wages and 5.55 million did not receive NT$55,833 in average wages last year.
The government is attributing the earnings disparity among different sectors to the coronavirus pandemic.
One a sector by sector basis - electronics makers raised pay and bonuses for employees.
But the hospitality and tourism sectors couldn't afford similar adjustments - and as a result of that, the gap between the highest and lowest-paid workers widened to 4.09 times, ending six years of declines.
