Taiwan's real wages rose to a four-year high in the first 10 months of the the year. But exactly how well are people doing in Taiwan's economy, which is heavily reliant on the high-paying tech industry? TaiwanPlus speaks to fair wage advocate Roy Ngerng.
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00:00Should we be encouraged by these record high employee pay figures?
00:04From a short-term perspective, it is encouraging to see that real wages are rising to cope
00:12with the inflation, especially since the crisis over the last few years.
00:17But if we look at it over the longer term, Taiwan's real wages have actually been growing
00:22much slower than most other advanced countries.
00:25When Taiwan looks at wage increases over the last many years, when we think in terms of
00:31minimum wage increase, we think in terms of how it should be pegged to economic growth
00:36or inflation, but we do not think about whether it is adequate for basic living.
00:42A large swath of Taiwanese workers are actually earning much lower than the basic wage necessary.
00:48So even if real wages are increasing, they are not adequate to keep up with the overall
00:55cost of living for basic necessities in Taiwan.
00:58Why is it that there is such a huge gap between the highest and lowest earners, and how can
01:03we expect the non-tech sectors to keep up?
01:06A huge issue with how Taiwan's wages at the bottom are still stagnant and not growing
01:11fast enough is because minimum wage is not growing fast enough.
01:15When government officials tend to position it as the manufacturing tech sector earning
01:20higher wages and therefore is more beneficial, the positioning neglects the fact that we
01:26should be looking at how the tech sector is growing at a normal rate or even still at
01:31a relatively slow rate, and that the services sector should be the one that should be catching
01:36up with the tech sector.
01:38What we're seeing is that in Taiwan, because minimum wage is growing so slowly, there is
01:42not enough push outwards to push wages and the services sector to grow.
01:47New labor ministry data shows that employees in Taiwan worked more hours this year than
01:53last year.
01:55How do working hours and overtime fit into this picture of how well workers are doing here?
02:02Taiwan's work hours are actually one of the longest among the advanced countries and in the world.
02:07If we do look at the correlations with life satisfaction, work engagement, fertility,
02:13it shows that there is a significant correlation in that workers are more unhappy, they feel
02:18that they do not have enough time.
02:20It also decreases the intention to have children, and this impacts on Taiwan's long-term growth
02:26as well.
02:27There are economic and social impacts.
02:29Incoming inequality drives higher social unhappiness, less trust towards other people, and also
02:36less support for Taiwan's democracy, which is very important, especially for Taiwan to
02:40defend itself from external forces such as China.
02:44So Taiwan's government needs to take a lot more comprehensive look in terms of how it
02:49grows the economy, that looks at it from a more inclusive perspective, more equal perspective.