This video recently went viral for some reason. Please comment thoughtfully and respectfully. Since you are all here, I suggest watching my video about Taiwan's universal health care system: th-cam.com/video/_dKa9j3wsS8/w-d-xo.html A really great thing about Taiwan that the US should emulate. I'd rather make a lot less a year but get easy, convenient universal health care. Wouldn't you? One more thing: Salary is not the end-all, be-all. Otherwise we would all be anesthesiologists in Sweden. The last thing I want viewers to think is that I hate it here or that Taiwan is a terrible place to live. It really is an amazing place. "I like this place a lot" is literally the second thing I said.
Excellent video! The YT algorithm strikes gold again. The situation in Taiwan sounds similar to japan. They’re robbing from the young to pay the promises made to the older generations (via salaries, benefits and pensions, etc) during the boom times of the 80s and 90s. In japan, it’s not just low wages but low everything. They use contractor positions to avoid paying out the same benefits the real (old) employees still get.
One of the overlooked reason is that parents push kids for white collar jobs, so the competition for desk jobs are fierce thus supply/demand drive salary down. This is why entry level desk job like bank tellers pay very little. Trade jobs actually pay very well in Taiwan because there is a shortage of workers, but social stigma and upbringing make people don't want to do it.
That, but also industrial hygiene in Taiwan is mostly (with some exceptions for international investors projects from Europe/USA) extremely poor, so such jobs are not only dirty and hot, but could cause long term health issues from carcinogens, teratogens, etc; exposing the worker and the worker's off-spring. Using third world labour instead of addressing the safety/health is the preferred solution.
Same here in the US. Certified welding, handyman work (electrician-HVAC-plumbing), electronics/equipment repair, commercial diving, and industrial technician work all pay well and are in high demand.
In America there is an insane demand for people to do white collar jobs or be some kind of technician. People all want a white collar job but the world is increasingly filled with robots that need people to maintain them. Welding is a laughably under-served industry with salaries higher than experienced desk jockeys.
I have worked in Japan for more than 5 years and they really over value tenure. There is automatic promotion based on 年功序列 for many companies, so you often get managers who have no business leading anything get thrown into a position they are completely unqualified for. On top of that, it is almost impossible to fire anyone, so people will just coast in a company for 20-30 years, become a manager and really muck things up. Since most of the management is elderly, they are really behind the times in many aspects as well. So there is a huge percentage of unproductive tech-illiterate old people running the daily workings of many Japanese companies.
I work in a Japanese company based in Singapore and what you described is so true. These people get promoted to positions of managers not because they are qualified to lead. They just there long enough and curry favor the right person to get there.
I also confirm that. I work with Japanese for 5 years now and this is sad truth. It is also common to stay at one company for majority if not whole life so there is no dynamic or competition among workers for promotion.
.. I lived in Taiwan for 4 years, the salary is not that much but the perks as a citizen and residents are good, free medical coverage for all people, no need to buy drugs, free hospitalization, food is affordable, computers and appliances are very affordable, transportation is quite cheap, and standards as a society is very high... so what else do you need....
You are right ! There are plenty positive elements .... the other problem is that natality is going down dramatically , houses are unaffordable ( at least in Taipei ) and young people do not have changes to build a future for themselves ..... but this happens everywhere not only Taiwan
Hey there I am from Denmark, I am not sure how we pull it off but we also have free education including university, hospitals and so on. But we are also getting paid a relative high amount. An average couple in Denmark with 2 children earns 4,456,442.Ntd a year before taxes.
Wages we have in Taiwan are enough to make a living inside Taiwan, but with the education we have we can easily make a lot more outside. Me for example got my university education in NA and decided to stay there just because the wages I get there is more than doubled; although I loved living in Taiwan but from a personal financial perspective it is just not a realistic decision to stay in Taiwan if you had the chance. This problem in the short term we have talented people in the country getting way less than what they deserved compare to the rest of the world, and in the long term leads to talent draining away from the country making us less competitive and prone to lose our value to the world, which makes us vulnerable to a array of geopolitical issues given our situation. In my opinion Taiwan is a very typical case of involution.
The problem is that Taiwanese ppl love to buy foreign products. (Middle income trap) This is when they feel they are poorer than the rest of the world.
Low wages, poor benefits, excruciating working hours and the least amount of paid leaves (in the world!) drove me to leave Taiwan, for my own health and future. Very sad but a decision that had to be made.
Pay should be relative to cost of living. Also, thats an Asian thing that Ive noticed in most Asian cultures--working yourself to death. Also US has a horrible work-life balance, but Asian countries are worse.
@@SkyHermit according to the labor law, after 6 months of working you'll get 3 days, after 1 full year of working you'll get 7 days. You'll get +1 day off for each additional year when you're working in the same company. It's sad
My aunt worked and retired as the head of accounting department for a major architectural and construction company in Taipei. When she retired, her pension was a lot less than I thought. She explained that her salary wasn’t not that much more than her subordinates. She explains because company have to pay pension based on salary, so managers are compensated via bonuses and gifts so they can bypass certain government taxes and labor costs. That’s what most privately held companies in Taiwan operate and compensate.
So bascially you hop on a plane to go to Singapore, and do the things you do in Taiwan, you get paid 3x. So to increase your value, the only skill you need to learn is how to buy a plane ticket.
@@jia2001 Here's a math question: In Taiwan, your salary is $2000 usd and living costs is $1000 usd. In Singapore, your salary is $4000 but your living expanses also double to $2000. Which one saves more money? Do the math. Higher/lower living costs does not matter, it matters how much money you have left after your salary. And having lived in both Taipei and Singapore, in Singapore, you will save at least twice as much, doing the exact same thing, as a foreigner, not to mention if you are Singaporean.
I got interested in this video because working for Taiwanese companies in the same industry was much worse than working for mainland Chinese companies. I saw far more bullying and antagonism towards employees, expecting as an American that the two cultures were similar. I was surprised that living a democracy did not improve labor conditions. Here, political leadership and regulatory capture, the sociological factors, play far more of role than economic metrics or culture. After all, socioeconomic status is negotiated and wrangled in market economies rather than being automatically dispensed based on economic metrics.
I wouldn't say the US labor standards are that good either. We have plenty of bodys under our rug we ignore by choice too. Democracy itself doesn't really guarantee any workers protections. The US had to have thousands die for simple things like an 8 hour day and even that isn't uniformly enforced or anything. The only way for a democracy to have good labor protection is to fight constantly for it, and unfortunately it is in the interest of the government to ignore those demands at almost any cost. The government will move the scale back in favor of the employer as fast as possible so if the population stops constantly fighting it those protections dissappear fast.
'democracy' has become a code word for 'subordinated to USA', and has nothing to do with participation or voice. you mention that you thought the two cultures are similar? how exactly is a country thousands of miles away that has always been part of china be culturally similar to USA? that's an odd expectation!
worked in Taiwan for five years in it's computer industry. my own experience tells me that in Taiwan's work culture, most companies see employees more like a disposable resource. in other word, employee is part of the "cost" and not as an asset, at least most of the companies and boss are like that. When cost cutting is often a way for them to stay competitive, then it's just natural for the wage to be kept artificially low. Not try to piss anyone off here about the work environment in Taiwan. This is just my own experience and opinion. It was a good working experience overall. just unfortunately sometimes these Taiwan business owner treat employee like a disposable item more so than in western companies.
I have worked in Taiwan too and I completely agree with your statement, felt very sad for my coworkers that have such low wages and holidays for all the time they spend in the company.
Same with all Chinese businesses profit is more important to them.. if they can cut big the expenses and no ones bothering them they will do it because no ones complaining
My two cents on Taiwan's anemic wage growth: As Taiwan's labor cost was about to go up in late 80s to early 90s, the island's capital naturally went to mainland China and SE Asia, and the government did nothing to intervene. As a result, no enough capital for developing future generation of tech or financial company, and workers' pay stagnated. True that HTC, Acer, TSMC, and ASUS etc. were founded there, but their main R&D, factories and customers were outside the island.
@@renchin2266you cite one example, and an example with national security implications. Taiwan couldn’t offshore it even if it wanted to because the US wouldn’t allow Taiwan to move to a unfriendly or even neutral country.
Wage stagnation in all East Asia is related to China’s economic opening. Add that to your analysis and you’ll find Taiwan Japan Korea HK and Singapore stagnant while China’s workers wages catch up to those economies. We’re in the mist of this balancing or equalization.
I am singaporean and our wages has not been stagnating like you say. Fresh grad wages has been increasing year on year yearly increment is 2 to 3 percent (for this not having promotion) so I have no idea what you are talking about
@@willempasterkamp862 really like people commenting without finding out Singapore inflation. 1980 to 2020 average inflation in Singapore is 2.27 percent.
I've studied in Taipei for 6 months and from what I've observed in restaurants and stores, Taiwanese people are really hard working. Stores have fewer employees compared to other places but they move really fast. Students also study A LOT. After schools, they still take up more classes like English and Math (my friends teach English). It's sad that even with all the work they do, it seems like it's still not enough for social mobility. 🙁
There are a lot of small businesses in Taiwan. Everyone wants to be their own boss there (especially the older generation). Who wouldn't want to do this and take a chance when the wages of working for someone else is so low. But this also means that you will need to wear multiple hats every day. You're the CEO, but you're also the accountant, the sales man, the cook, the laborer, etc. Not everyone is good at everything, that means they will be spending time doing work that is not at their peak productivity. But I do believe that these businesses earn more than your average wage, and isn't factored into that average wage statistic. I remember my grandparents operating a store in Taiwan in the 70's and 80's and the rent for their store is at least NT$40000. I remember them complaining about it. That is already close to the average wage in the 2010's and it was 30-40 years ago. And they were able to pay it month after month and build up savings for retirement, support themselves, raise their kids (my parents, aunts and uncles). So they are earning much more than that while sitting in their store (and home) and have plenty of down time between customers for leisure (TV watching, etc.)
There’s a similar issue with salary and seniority in Japan. It’s good for company loyalty, but the best performers go to businesses where they are rewarded for efforts over seniority
I remember going to school on Saturdays in Taiwan. But for students, I believe it is a short day on Wed. and Sat. At least for elementary school only. But people work all week until Sunday.
Good insight. I set my mind long ago that I should pursue a career in the west because in Taiwan for a normal employee there’s virtually no chance for you to have a financially sufficient life. I met my wife who’s a US citizen and working in Taiwan. We both believe this place is definitely not the place for our family(we consider owning a house a must). It’s cheap in general but if you look at our wages it’s actually very expensive for an average Taiwanese person to live a comfortable life here.
I think most people feel the same that’s why Taiwan has the lowest fertility rate. That’s why a lot of people like us eventually leave Taiwan since they can’t really afford having children.
Germany did encourage its older workers in the 2000's to go early pension. It backfired because a lot of bigger companies lost after all still crucial old engeneering wisdom.
Hard to tell the future. I see many young Taiwanese with 2-3 credit cards being in perpetual debt, because their low wages can't sustain the lifestyle they desire. When a job at 7-11 that doesn't require any training pays only marginally less than an entry position at even government institutions where you need a BA or MA, there is something very wrong. In my opinion, it's not about productivity, but about a combination of greedy bosses and an oversupply of college educated people. I had Taiwanese companies offer me 50k NTD per month when I earned more than double in Germany. And I know a couple foreigners with the same experience as well as Taiwanese who went abroad to earn 2-3 times more than in Taiwan. Young people are being shafted hard.
If you are making low wages, you will not appreciate money. It’s common for low paid workers to spend all the money. Because when you can’t fullfill real prosperity, your happiness can only come from brief and social enjoyment.
I started working for myself because the hourly payout I get working for myself is literally 10 times that I get from working for a boss in Taiwan. I do guitar repair, and I make more in 1 hour doing that than 8 hours working at 7-11. Also jobs requiring a BA or even MA is paying maybe 20% more than a full time job at 7-11, which is really making it pointless to even want to get a BA considering the amount of studying one must do in Taiwan to get into a decent university. Plus the working hour is insane, if you have to quit your job to get a week off, something's not right. But on the other hand I'm seeing lots of ads recruiting service jobs for very close to 200nt per hour, with a monthly salary of over 35,000 a month if working full time. When I first came back to Taiwan everyone was advertising less than 65nt per hour with pretty much every single jobs advertising that rate. I had gotten a job at Family Mart working graveyard shift for 90nt per hour and I still had to work 50 hours a week to make barely 19,000 per month. Not going back to those days again. Much rather starve and take my chances with translation work.
Taiwanese people sort of adopt a Japanese working culture where the boss or seniors has absolute power. Fairness aside if the people in charge knows what they are doing then this might give an overall plus for everyone. The problem is these decision maker in Taiwan has enjoyed power for too long and Instead of thinking about how to innovate all they know how to improve earning is cut cost or abuse the employees. According to what my friends told me in Vancouver there there are working holiday programs for oversea workers and from what I know Taiwanese workers are the most sought after. Why? Because they can take the most abuse and fights back the least amount. The employers would often choose workers from Taiwan over Philippines or Vietnam two countries that has 1/5th to 1/10th GDP per capital because Taiwanese workers are more docile. This is freaking sad.
@@franciscoverra2307 that's very true.. that's a whole other layer of the Taiwanese society exploitation that you don't hear much of. Someone should do a video on that.. I know for sure the XYZ Da Vinci brand 3d printers are all made by cheap Filipino labor that are all cramped in tiny dirty dormitories. Most of the janitorial works are all done by the Filipinos too, and they get treated really bad by the Taiwanese who hired them.
With that work culture the corporation don’t want to lose Taiwan as a vassal state. In the East historically there has always been more workers then farm land leading to the work culture of everyone is replaceable. In Western Civilization after the Black Plague came through, the population dropped 40% and workers were not replaceable leading to a more healthy work culture. This also led the push to colonization, since the elite couldn’t squeeze the peasants so they looked overseas to grow there fortune. China initially didn’t want to open to the West and initially limited traded to Canton and would only trade products for silver which was a problem for the British. So they started growing opium in India and flooding it in China to get back the silver. There was then the Opium Wars between the British and China and as a result the British got Hong Kong.
But I think the situation here in America is sort of like, if not much more serious than, the likes of HK & Japan, where individual workers' productivity increased but they aren't paid much more for that increase
Worse is the dollar being printed like nothing and the money flows through the banks into the hands of investors to pump and create an environment of endless asset price inflation
I think not. Wages are increasing in the US since the 90s(end of the boom) at the same rate as Inflation. Also, US productivity has remained almost the same.
@@iamsheep minimum wage is 30.000NT ($978 US) , I am laterally living in Taipei , many confessed they can’t simply get past 30-32.000 , even if you found a better pay , work insurance and health insurance plus other taxes will eat everything down till you get to the same sum that is .. minimum wage
I was on a merchant ship that drydocked in Kaohsiung some years ago, and I really liked it. I'm sorry to hear incomes are poor. The Taiwanese are great people, and I hope I can go back someday.
My parents have said that they think both Taiwan & S Korea have too many universities & their their workforce is overqualified, intensifying competition for jobs
Education is never too much; when you created highly educated labor force but failed to create jobs, the problem is definitely not the education system
Agree. It is simply because jobs and manufactures moved to China that lead to China's prosperity and left rest of world GDP goes down including USA. All other reasons are trivial.
because smart people is working hard to replace every job on earth with robots and AI. even their own jobs can go away if their own AI can do it better than them. Warren Bennis Quotes The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog.
@@nehcooahnait7827 The education system is a major problem when the standards of higher education are low. There are many 'newly' setup universities in TW eager to draw students, whereby admission standards are low. Businesses know those graduates cruise through the four years at college and didn't learn much so why would they be willing to pay higher wages. Of course there's always other issues like a stagnant economy not producing enough higher level jobs. Nevertheless, if those graduates are of good quality than they can find good paying jobs in other countrie just computer graduates of IIT in India are sought after by US companies. Therefore, the main issue TW graduates are paid poorly are their poor standard of university education.
@BGGFW CHK This made me chuckle. What people generally refer to as the Golden age of the US happened in the 1950s and 1960s when the US was on top of the world in conceivably every economic indicator. There were a lot of reasons for this with manufacturing prowess being one of them. Those days have gone and trying to bring back manufacturing, while it would help in the long term for not being as dependent on fragile global trade, isn't going to bring the US back to that period of time. "The curse of the baby boomers" as I like to say. They overall still expect so much in a time where the rules have monumentally shifted. The promise of ever increasing prosperity isn't a reality any more unfortunately.
Taiwan province has quite a lot of farming, so food is cheap. Also, outside Taibei there're tonnes of cheap labour in the province, so no need to pay much to get the workers do the jobs.
@@richwu6752 You are partially right. In my Taiwan group of highly skilled engineers, 2 went to China, one went to Korea and back, two remained in Taiwan. Study of economics is often relative, and and never 100% one way or the other.
In Taiwan inflation has been low, medical care is very affordable, food prices are moderate and stable, housing costs aren't nearly as high as in many other countries, and transportation is cheap. So wages remain average. Except for parts of Taipei, the cost of living is fairly low. But then again, the government has been way too tight with minimum wage increases due to pressure from companies wanting to cut operational costs. The GDP is quite low but living conditions are stable except for the threats from China.
Very interesting video! I lived in Taiwan during the pandemic. I was essentially “stuck” there due to circumstances. I applied and was awarded the Gold Card in the Arts/Culture category. I witnessed a lot of things that you mentioned in my industry (music) and I thought so much about the situation in Taiwan. The arts industry in Taiwan is extremely weak, the weakest in all the countries I’ve visited, and I pondered this question so much. I saw so much incompetence from people in power. I actually made the news at the end of last year for starting a protest to change some of the stupid rules in the MRT system regarding instrument transportation. I left Taiwan as soon as I could because it was extremely depressing to be there. I spent 2 1/2 years stuck there, as soon as I could resume my economic activities I left. I am 3 months away from being eligible for permanent residency but I am not sure I am even willing to come back and do those 3 months. I openly talked a lot about the incompetency in Taiwan during my stay. Lots of people were definitely offended, but lots of local Taiwanese privately messaged me to thank me for saying what they cannot say because it would harm their career prospects. A lot of the best that Taiwan has to offer, left Taiwan already, or are yearning to leave. It is very sad
Thing about Taiwan is you can’t quite criticize too openly, especially if you were living elsewhere prior. As you mentioned, a lot of people knows “problems” but none are willing to do anything about them. A major reason why Taiwan not only stagnates in salary.
Thought Taiwan/ROC has a mature Chinese pop music industry that attracts Chinese singers from other territories too such mainland China, Malaysia, Singapore e.g. By2, Ivy Lee, Tanya Chua (though its facing competition from K-pop)
@@lzh4950 Yes you are right, my original comment wasn’t very nuanced. There’s a lot that can be said about Taiwan’s multilayered music scene. The commercial pop scene is definitely very thriving, but it is the general industry in general and the other layers. A lot of it has to do with mentality and general low standards. For example, I just came back from Nashville which is one of the world’s music capitals. What I saw there was a very tight community of musicians encouraging each other, pushing each other to always be better for the sake of growth. In Taiwan, there is 擦不多I(close enough) culture that really bothered me. Of course, just because Taiwan has a bad music scene also doesn’t mean that there are not great people doing great music. Such people are more of an exception; I’m referring to a general atmosphere. I think having talked to a lot of people in different industries, it’s the same observation. There’s a lot of politics (as there is everywhere else) and the kind of politics that sometimes discourages talented people who then chose or yearn to leave.
I worked in both HK and Shenzhen China. I must say, HK and China's competition is cut throat. Performance and data will determine the employee's year end bonus and the right to remain in the company. Literally, the bottom 10% would be cut from the company. Tenure means little here. If one is 60 and can still bring in the numbers, he can work till his 70s if he wants to. I've met people in their 40s and 50s getting cut from the company because they can't compete with young staff that are putting in more hours, working on weekends, going the extra miles to keep customers happy, improving themselves and building up their own team and network.
As a Taiwanese individual who lived overseas for more than a decade - I can confirm that the wages didn’t change much in the past 5 years. The economy isn’t helping us at all because there’s an existing toxic relationship between employers and employees. Employees get paid so little, while holding a job that translates to 2-3 people’s positions together. Employers don’t trust the employees and tend to hold onto traditional work values - crushing deadlines, a lack of company culture, and a lack of creativity.
For better or worse when wages no longer rising then many politicians (worldwide) will focus on nationalism. I think Taiwan low wages as you said is due greatly to being so close to China and having similar culture/language so it is easier for the brightest to open up their business or to work in China especially since China government gives many incentives to attract those individuals.
If people in Taiwan are leaving for greener pastures in other countries then that should BOOST wages in Taiwan as companies try and retain their workforce
Actually, rather than labor flight, I believe capital flight may be a factor. Due to cultural and linguistic proximity, it’s much easier for an established Taiwanese firm to open a new factory in China (as opposed to say, a Western firm). So the capital flight has been relatively more severe. Hopefully, in 2021, as Taiwanese firms reestablish themselves in Taiwan, this will help raise local wages.
@@lancewood1410 well it is Taiwan’s government to blame but mainland China’s economy is one of the the causes. In mainland China’s big cities they just objectively pay higher than Taiwanese companies overall
Basically, the commodity of labour is also under the forces of demand-supply. The level of economic activities is not enough to generate the demand for labour. Somebody is hungry enough to accept the job for lower price.
Brain drain stemming from a desire for Taiwanese independence, leading to low corporate investment (political instability), low productivity growth (low investment), leading to low pay behind the brain drain. Lots of talented Taiwanese working in Mainland China, Hong Kong, the US, etc.
Taiwan’s Economy boomed when Taiwanese people helped produced many finished products for the World during 1981 - 1990. Then many companies and factories relocated to China in the ‘90s, and many Taiwanese and their money went with them. This hurt the economy in Taiwan, and this is the main reason why salaries in Taiwan had remained low for so many years. What used to be Taiwan’s productivities and economic activities relocated to China since the ‘90s. Hi-tech industry started its move in early 2000. Taiwan then became only the office for taking orders from customers and maybe a place to do research and development.
What you said sounds right at first, then it’s total non-sense in fact. You may said all those money and companies flow to China did affect Taiwan’s economy in 90’s, but after 2 decades, you still believe that’s the reason, I would say you are totally a loser, doesn’t take the responsibility to fix the problem. In 70 & 80’s, Taiwan government used to plan out a meaningful economic plans and policies, and Taiwanese rolled up sleeves, working hard to build up the amazing economy in Taiwan. However, in the past 20+ years, Taiwanese were too crazy about politics, picked up incompetent government to guide you, you are still working hard, but in wrong directions, you are still working hard, but hammering on the wrong spot. You need to find some people with real global visions to be the government to guide the people and companies. Not just choose some persons only know know how to fake education degree to deceive ppl. China may the cause to erupt Taiwan economic balance at first, but not the reason to use it as a scapegoat to cover your failure forever
I know lots of university students in Taiwan are simply incompetent due to the education environment. Students are under intense pressure in high school learning about something that has absolutely no value in the work force. Since they are under immense amount of pressure in high school, students in Taiwanese universities focus on leisure time, which is the polar opposite of the reason of pursuing a higher education. I also agree the inability to work under pressure unlike the former generation. it is upsetting that I am describing my very best friends in Taiwan. However, most of them simply lack the basic skills in a profitable economy
Maybe depends on the universities your friends attended. My daughter and son attend top universities in Taiwan and so far I am quite satisfied with the education. I myself attended HS and college in the US and I think the fundamental education (undergraduate level) that my children are having now are actually better than what I had. And when I compare the syllabus in my daughter's major with the syllabus of universities in the US of the same major, the classes she is taking in undergrad level are offered in graduate level in the US. But best of all is, both my daughter and my son have become more motivated to continue studying to grad school. I think one of the indications of good education is, it encourages rather than discourage ppl to learn more. Btw, they major in science and engineering.
I am from Taiwan and recently graduated from high school and will attend university this year. I think your point about high pressure academic environment in highschool is partly true, but with the steady decline of new born, the competition is also less and less tougher as time goes by. The main problems are that in Taiwan, every highschool student want to study either medical or EECS. For example, in my class, about two third of student study EECS and medical, do everyone loves it? Maybe just to meet social expectations. And the development of our industries are pretty unbalanced, most industries other then semiconductors pay poorly while the boss reaping a great amount of wealth. So yes, the gdp is growing every year, but the money don't go to average people's hands, instead, those money go to real estate market.
@@lizbennet90 Thanks for sharing, I'm glad you're happy with the education your kids are getting. I think there no doubt the tip notch education in Taiwan is very successful. Take STEM and medical field as examples, they produce one of the best or the best professions in the industry. What I'm worry about is outside of those fields, schools, the average, or even above average students are still lacking behind on the global stage. Most of the Universities in Taiwan just simply don't train students to be competitive enough for the industry but rather focus on things like, awards, admissions, scores and things that just doesn't matter. If they are able to get close to what the courses that your kids are in, it would be the interest for the taiwanese society
@@whatthehellisthis6245 Yoooo! Congrats on the graduation bruh! Yeah I agree the industry developement is quite imbalanced at this moment. The STEM field is very interesting but other than that, I really don't understand why the huge gap. I really think it's likely how competitive high school acedemic system is. It is leaving students having no time to figure out what they like, have an interest or like do extra curriculum that actually matters for their future. I've been out of that system for almost a decade so I'm pretty sure you are more insightful on the subject matter but I'm just not really sure if taiwanese high school/university are guiding students to focus their energy on things that actually matters
8:15 You say every country in the world except the US needs to worry about low wages and brain drain. The US isn't a monolith: rust belt states have very different economic outlooks to some of the wealthy coastal cities. This economic divide helps power Trump success
@@Asianometry Yeah that's fair enough. I usually wouldn't be so pedantic but this American economic divide (and the feeling of being left behind) has caused so much political upheaval in recent years
It’s for a different video (one I probably won’t make because this isn’t an America focused channel) but I feel the political divide is more complicated than just economics. Adjusted for PPP, incomes of the worst performing states are in the same neighborhood as the top European countries. If I were to better characterize what’s happening in the states, I’d call it more a cultural divide. Some of Trump’s top supporters are financially well off but regardless feel an immense fear of the changes going on in their country.
when income rises to a certain degree I think people start comparing themselves to others around them or more recently what they see on tv/internet. Also USA wages may be higher (compared to much of world) but so is much of the necessary expenses like education, medical, housing...which is why some Americans are retiring overseas.
South Korea is trying to boost wage by raising minimum wage. And it worked in a degree. Wage gap is reduced and some low wage industry is being "adjusted". There were outcry of small and medium business but overall wage level and productivity are boosted. I think that Taiwan also need similar measure.
Wage inequality is a globally phenomenon. It is the product of government policies that tilted toward the rich corporations vs. the little guys. My 2 cents opinion. As in the US, the rich gets richer, the poor get poorer.
A friend of mine who is an engineer here in Taiwan explained to me that companies in engineering sector force their employees to constantly study the new technology and methodologies. If they don't or can't pass the exam at the end of the period they're let go. Just one example of the ways they have been able to circumvent ageism
I think it's important that an engineer stay up to date with new technologies. To me, that's not circumventing ageism. That's competency. Would you want someone building your bridge with things they learned in the 1970s?
I grew up in Taiwan and recently discovered your channel. I got top marks at the SAT-equivalent tests when entering college and ended up working in healthcare although I was much more interested in CS. The salary stagnation is also felt in the healthcare jobs here although you don't hear that much because the pay is generally high to begin with. But the consensus among my high school friends were that the iron grip the government choking the health care cost, though come at the cost of line workers' living standard, was the last thing keeping the society afloat and unrest down. Part of which the reason the brain drain in healthcare is also rampant. Many seek job in the US, Australia, Canada, Britain.
Very interesting! Though I don't understand why one would try to explain the stagnant real wages with different "unproductivity theories". You just said that the productivity is increasing, but the workers share of the profit is not. The older generation can keep their salaries, just increase the workers share, and give it to the younger generation. This is a conflict between the capital owners and the workers, and explanations like the workers are ineffective, or that some workers are doing to well, do not hold up, but are an efficient diversion from the real problem.
Singapore allows foreigners and immigrants such that a good majority of locals becomes managers of them. Is that simple. They also attract talents to compete with locals in measured ways. This keep their productivity up.
This is such a complex topic to cover but you did a great job bringing several key points. I was making more teaching English in Taipei than my smart engineering friends (that shouldn’t have to be the case anywhere). Taipei was super expensive for the common salary, but you can branch out into the many suburbs which get much cheaper. But the low wages rhetoric has consumed my own time in Taiwan researching and I keep hitting the “low innovation” despite what we hear about how Taiwan dominates the global cheap market, as an example. The deep “family” society makes it so that you get generations are not feeling “forced” to innovate or go the “extra mile” as they have a net to fall upon at all times. Nonetheless, the case in Taiwan baffled me the more I lived there as I really expected a Singapore-type income society but I found a lot more societal financial struggles than I anticipated
The GDP per capita in Taiwan is higher than many countries in their area. It is around 54, 000 US where China is around 16,000 US. My daughter taught English there and traveled around Asia for two years, she was taken by Taiwan and how well they were doing.
As an expat in Taipei and an employer too. I have come across this discussion a lot. Except for real estate everything else is cheap compared to neighbouring cities like Hong Kong, Shanghai or Seoul. Education, Health care, Electricity, Fuel prices, Public transportation, etc are not expensive in this region. I have lived in Singapore and Hong Kong enough years to understand the difference. And being an employer I understand the difficulty of paying salaries. Almost 80% of the small business owners pay more salary than the income they draw for themselves. This is the truth, If minimum wage is increased again, we will just see more 'shop space for rent' boards as we already see way too many. Also, I wish English teaching expats and youtubers grasp a better idea about this than just say things like the money is not going to the workers. In a fight with big corporations regarding them paying less salary to their employees, small businesses come to their streets along with their families. Taiwanese companies need to pay more salary and Taiwanese businesses have to at least survive.
I'm with you on your take. One thing I would add is the government policies in tw that drive the minimum wage up. The "Sudo-capitalist with a blend of a socialist" tw government is obligated to too many pensions to the people, and they are doing some accounting fudging to ease off their loads. So they figured other than printing more money, they can create inflation on their currency to cheat off their debt to the people. At the same time, they want this to benefit not only the government, but to also attract those foreign big corporations especially in the tech industry like Google and yahoo, where the government can also benefit more from making those deals. Unfortunately small businesses (probably like you) and the landlords get hurt by that kind of strategy, which hurts the middle class that is the main driving force of the Taiwanese economy. I don't think it's much of a conspiracy to link the connections between corporations and the governments around the world in this global business environment that we live in today. It's not too hard to look up the names of those people who are proudly publicizing their credentials.
It's difficult make big Value from small business. Huge company make Huge Huge Value. Purchasing power parity will be higher, everything is cheaper. Whatever it's too many small businss. TSMC salary is good, that's different.
Sep 12, 2023 China outlines plan to make Fujian a zone for integrated development with Taiwan. Do you think a million young islanders will move to the mainland to start a business?
Not my area of expertise but apparently the lack of economic growth in wages makes Taiwan a good target for greater mainland Chinese influence on the young population. It's already growing but China can take advantage of this.
The employment environment in Taiwan is quite deformed. If young people want higher salaries, they can only become doctors or develop into the electronics industry. Starting salaries in other industries are almost impossible to live on. Another worrying phenomenon is the low birth rate in Taiwan, which has made the problem of labor shortage even more serious.
As a member of a generation that has already seen two major recessions at the start of our career, it just feels like we're overworked, underpaid and, in general, lacking any trust that things will get better. Personally, at this point I just feel like we're waiting for older, richer, generations to retire.
But by the time they retire your generation will probably want to keep things as currently is since your next in line and would like to keep it as it has been. Sadly worldwide things will not change without major war, depression...to shake things up.
@@littledovecitydust one things doesn't have anything to do with the other. If you're from China just wait 20 years. You're going to be soon in the same boat, due to a demographic crisis (too many old people, not enough young people)
@@Sergiosanpr, be wary of the purveyors of the demographic doomsayers. They call for unlimited supply of youthful cheap labor because they refused to contribute their fair share to compensate their retiring workforce. In the current pandemic, it seems that they wish to get rid of 'this group of useless eaters'. This system has very little respect for their fellow human beings, because it's concentrated on profit and exploitation. Shouldn't we evolve into a more humane economic model where profit is not the main objective, but the living standards of the society as a whole?
Ever since China acceptance into the WTO, Taiwan's labor force couldnt compete with China's cheaper labor force hence Taiwan's salaries are low in the low tech industries. In the high tech industries I think salaries plus bonuses should be competitive otherwise TSMC would not have been able to retain its talent!
1) The obvious explanation would be the Chinese labour market drags down the wage level in Taiwan. 2) South Korean labour movement is more militant. Taiwanese trade union movement is very docile and ineffectual. Both government and enterprises make sure of such too. 3) Singaporean wage comparison data from official sources don't include huge number of guest workers (over 1m) doing menial jobs that pay much less. 4) Taiwanese government health, social welfare and educational provisions are much better than Singapore and South Korea. This is a substitute to income or transfer of government income to labour. 5) Taiwan also has very low charges for utilities, power, water and telecommunications as well as public transport. Effectively this boosts real labour income. 6) Stagnation in wage is common phenomenon across many nations. US has seen similar and worse. Australia too except with lower tax rate. Both however are helped by real lower costs to consumer products mostly imported from China. 7) Likely consumer goods also are lower in real costs from China in Taiwan. Hence there is no imperative to increase wages. 8) South Korea is rather protected as an Asian economy. Eg, one sees very few non-Korean brand cars in Korea. Virtually all white goods sold are of Korean brands. Even cinemas have to allocate 20% showing time, daily, to Korean films. This explains Hyundai, LG and many famed Korean films and K-pop stars. 9) This allows wider spread of growth to many more industries in Korea than in Taiwan which is very open to global competitions reducing likelihood of broader success in large number of industries domestically. 10) So strong labour demands in Korea apply to wider spread of industries keeping wages at good level. 11) North Korea as an issue is well exploited by the South Korean allowing such deep economic protectionism with US sanctions. US on the other hand wouldn't ever let Taiwan get away with this. 13) US accuses China of currency manipulation. Well, South Korea started in 1997. Its currency is still lower than before 1997. This forced both Japan and China to keep their currencies low. Again, the North Korean card is exploited here.
About South Korea, some points are valid, especially the militant labor movement. But for others, you are just regurgitating the petrified stereotypes. 8)=> Definitely not true! Come to Korea and witness the insatiable taste for premium brand cars (mostly German). Other non-premium foreign brands are also well represented. Go to any department store. They are jam packed with foreign brand shops. Yes... you have to be "premium" in order to compete in Korea.. Korean shoppers have very discerning taste.. 11)=> True during the cold war period! It has been a while since the cold war ended... right? Your mindset is stuck in 1980s playbook. Just, give credit where it's due.... koreans being passionate and fast-movers, instead of spewing your own personal biases...
Can’t speak for all Taiwanese. We went to visit a friend like 8 years ago. We thought she would need financial help, but when she took us to a restaurant, she was ordering lots of seafood and many other dishes. There was only 4 of us at the table, but she ordered like 8 dishes. My main point is, we were surprised when she pulled out her money to pay the bill. She had a stack full of $100 US bills. There was at least $2000 worth.
Foreign Direct Investment is expectedly low. Wage economics is simple. The more companies willing to enter the Taiwanese market, the more demand there will be for workers. The more demand for workers...
The textbook definition of economic output in the video ignores entrepreneurship. It's not just 'labor and capital'; it's the efficiency of resource allocation to meet demand that matters. Labor not even necessarily included.
This videos ignores a number of things. 1) wages have actually grown faster under Tsai IngWen than under Ma (the previous president whom they actually fell under for a while). Tsai has considerably increased minimum wages. 2) cost of living is always important and if it were not for property prices Taiwan would be surprisingly cheap. A more effective way to create economic equality in Taiwan would be property law reform (Taiwan's property laws are nuts but include very low taxes, bizarre zoning restrictions, a huge% of buildings being illegal/without licenses etc). 3) Taiwanese wages are low but in some ways people are better off (you can find a similar situation in say Singapore too) than some places like China because of better low cost health care and other government services.
People are definitely better off financially in Singapore. Comparing between Singpore citizens in Singapore and Taiwanese citizens in Taiwan. In Singapore, 90% of people own home, it’s common for people in 20s and 30s to own an apartment of 3 rooms. Even though costs are higher in Singapore, the difference in salaries will 100% ensure you have more savings. Savings turn into investment, etc and mind that Singapore has no capital gain taxes. Singapore has better infrastructure, better schools, better sewage system, better water supply, better government aids. And yeah the pride of Taiwan, healthcare... guess what? Most Singaporeans don’t pay for medicals either, mostly covered by their companies and their pension funds. The list just goes on the on, so please stop 自我安慰, life does not get easier because things are cheaper if you can't save and invest.
Also, wage gap is also lower in Taiwan. Taiwan is actually more livable than US. Just look at Bay Area, the amount of homeless is insane or Hong Kong, even South Korea. Obviously Singapore is an exception.
One of the reasons for the stagnation of pay for the Taiwanese, especially its graduates, was due to the indiscriminate production of university graduates. Over the years Taiwanese universities expanded to number more than a hundred with plenty of poorly qualified students graduating. This was done in order to be more equitable for the population to aspire to be university graduates, hence, tremendously lowered their standards. As too many poorly qualified graduates chasing for dwindling jobs there was hardly any prospect for increasing remuneration.
Part of issue is currency conversion. Policy of E Asian countries is to have currency rates that give them export advantage (see mpettis.com). From 1950 to 2000 Taiwan had role similar to China, making low then higher tech products are lower cost. I remember ~1992 you could buy a very good bicycle part (allow stem for handlebars) for half what you'd pay for Italian one. Taiwan took over the low-cost tool market. Then China came in and took this whole market.
@@VVV-DL Been to China for a year. TW is better but just check aq index sites. It is still shit. I always run with respro when in Taipei. Well it is your choice what you do with your health. a lot of TW dont' give a damn about health, just saying.
Another huge influence is that the datas are inaccurate. A lot of Taiwanese workers, especially those working in small business and company, don’t report their real income to avoid tax and business owners would also report lower salaries to avoid tax as well. They also get paid through physical cash without bank transfer record. So a lot of the statistics on income and salary are extremely under rated.
@@MMLL369 not necessary, at least not in Taiwan. Also, a lot of company choose to separate worker salary into two parts, one is through bank transfer (this one is usually the minimum wage) and the other through cash( this one is not recorded by the government or any official stats). That’s why so many workers are labeled as being paid only at minimum wages or only a bit higher. But in fact a lot of them have a second form of salary that is not being recorded.
@@sunrisesu5548 Thanks for the explanation. So as long as one doesn't require profile building for mortgages, there could be invisible high earners behind the curtains LoL
Very interesting point buddy brought up at the end, re Hong Kong, where people have given up on their economic prospects and start focusing on social issues. Europe had the same problems in the 1840s-50s. There was widespread wage stagnation and un/under-employment It ended up in several wars, revolutions, and repression. Not a good period, and I fear we might be headed for a repeat. Just goes to show that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
It’s not really about bad labor productivity. It is just more profitable to grow your money with financial instruments than to invest it for actual physical labor. It is a global phenomenon and has been like this for half a century now
I would like to point out that how difficult to earn a college (any college) degree back say 30 years ago. You mentioned that "almost everyone has college degree now." This makes value of college degree much less now. I talked to few Taiwan University students before, and I am not impressed. Hired few college students and they lack grit. They all want to get into TSMC or some highflying tech companies, but ...
Minimum salary NT$23,100 which is about $800. Average salary abut double that. I don't call it low. Prices were not cheap, but not that crazy expensive.
Taiwan’s salaries in objectively lower than Mainland’s coastal cities. For the same job there is always some place that just pays more in Mainland regardless the overall average. Taiwan losing its valuable humans resources to Mainland Chinese firms is a fact.
@@nehcooahnait7827 Just not true (unless you count HK/Macau). The average income is higher in Taiwan even compared with ShenZhen, Shanghai etc. And now because of the virus many people who worked in China before moved back to Taiwan (including me).
@@naguoning He was not talking about "the overall average income". In fact it is true that many traditional well-paid jobs (like financial, high-tech and educational sectors) have higher salaries in Shenzhen than in Taipei.
Nice research. In my opinion, the main reason to cause wage stagnation is Taiwan's companies have huge investment to China in 90's, that turned out the lower opportunities and the wages in Taiwan and a high economic development in China. The china set many traps to attract Taiwan's entrepreneurs. Taiwan's labor are hard workers and have high productivity. But rare opportunity cause higher competition and lower wages. This circumstance is going to change due to the migration of Taiwanese companies in China.Hopefully, it can change the wage stagnation situation in the near future.
I wouldn’t say those were traps lol. Taiwan entrepreneurs are having fun exploiting Mainland Chinese workers while making a shit load of money. As self-interested individuals in a market economy, they gave absolutely no shit over the well-beings of their workers or the fact that Taiwan’s working class had to accept lower wages to even get a job. TW’s government has always been very conservative over labor protections cuz it sounds scarily ‘socialistic’.
Salary for engineers are quite high. combined with a low cost of living, the actual earning could be higher than neighboring cities like Hong Kong (at least for engineers)
I might be exaggerating but I think that has use to see general trends. Taiwanese labour has been utterly defeated post 90’s with capital flight to the mainland so these days unless you’re in design and manufacturing of IC’s you’re more or less considered surplus population that capital is unwilling to pay for the labour reproduction, hence the low birth rate. Taiwanese with its anti communism history unfortunately don’t seem to understand there is a class war, which wasn’t always the case, 375 rent reduction happened at a time when Taiwanese was no way as productive and educated as today, making some of the points in this video rather ahistorical. For those who don’t know tw government fixed land rent for farmers at 37.5% of their annual income, those that were above it needed to be reduced and those below it cannot be increased to it, in 1951, three years after their defeat by the ccp. That’s may be like asking Taiwanese billionaires today to give up a significant percentage of their annual income. It’s impossible to imagine it today. And makes you wonder may be that’d to do w Mao executing landlords across the straight.
I fully agree with your analysis especially with the part about capital flowing out of Taiwan into China. Factories that had mastered production would have focused on the tertiary sector of the economy - and very importantly adding more value to the products they manufacture. However when they moved production over to China the value of what they manufactured didn't increase as this wasn't necessary. Being cheap a good enough incentive for people to buy them.
I'll just leave my thought here: When I first came back to Taiwan back in 2003, minimum wage was 65nt per hour and it had not changed for over 10 years. Not only that but almost every jobs out there advertised that hourly rate and did not deviate from that by even 1nt. Essentially every single jobs paid 65 per hour unless it was say graveyard shift at a convenience store, then it might go up a little more. It actually wasn't until president Ma Ying Jiou that they went and raised it all the way to 90 per hour, and employers fought HARD against the increase. Since President Tsai things have actually gotten better, with wages going to something like 160 per hour back in 2019 and now it's 176 per hour, however most jobs are advertising higher, like 180-200 per hour even. Yet despite that prices for stuff has only gone up modestly though most Taiwanese thinks "everything goes up in price except for wage". If only they seen how bad things got in the states... like massive inflation yet minimum wage stayed at $7.25 per hour, with McDonalds paying about 8 dollars per hour. When I worked at Walmart I started at 9 per hour, and went up close to 11 per hour later on. In that same time period price of everything has only gone up, and keep in mind in the US you have to have a car, even in the city and you can imagine you can't even live on 15 per hour. In Taipei you do not need a car. Healthcare is cheap (in America it's not), MRT prices have actually gone down because they started offering the 1280nt monthly passes (they did not exist back in 2005 when I started working, and you can easily blow over 3000 per month just taking the MRT). I'd say things have gotten better. I'm hearing about work shortages in Taiwan, even service jobs like 7-11 is becoming short based on the number of help wanted sign I keep seeing. But I still hate working for a Taiwanese boss...
Your analysis in incorrect because you cite Taipei, I could just as easily cite New York City where not even the rich drive as an example. And the workers shortage is not unique to Taiwan but all of east Asia because of the low birth rates and how cost of living. 7/11 in Japan and South Korea have also been struggling to hire. Taiwan and China later on have long since offshored super cheap manufacturing to SE Asia.
I really would love me you to go wider and deeper on this point. A video that is 30-90 minutes or more likely the series that also touches on USA, EU and China. This is great stuff, especially analysis of marginal hour pay.
from what I understand, lots Taiwan companies make the real pay on bonuses. Like the average salaries are low, even for high tech jobs. The bonuses however, goes as high as over 100k USD a year pending on ur position and what u do in the company. Not quite sure what company u r working for, however most Taiwan companies pay employees that way. Like the bonuses are extra commissions pending on company earnings. There r a lot people I know that work in the tech field in Taiwan, has salaries of only $20-30k usd max, but with yearly bonus top 100k
One way Taiwan can get rid of older workers is by offering them early retirement packages. My company does it all the time! I work in banking and one of our high net worth clients used to be an executive at our bank and he is a cheapskate but he took an early retirement when the company offered him the package which was strategic because they were able to replace him with a younger and cheaper employee!
I love Taiwan, but I also feel with salaries being low in the coming future. It will drive away, the most educated people in Taiwan to search for better opportunities elsewhere. This could affect the country in the long term future. The country needs to keep its educated nationals as well as attract more educated foreigners with the salary it offers. Your thoughts
Officials know that salaries are low. But macro policy is hard. Even right now I struggle to come up with ideas. It’s not as simple as mandating minimum wage raises. Low wages are also because Taiwan companies need to get more profitable so to be able to pay more. It is a problem for almost every region in the world.
Low wages is a double edged sword (although, I also personally prefer if Taiwanese wages increase). If the Taiwanese government can encourage entrepreneurship, maybe through incubators, to tap into low cost skilled labor, we might get a win-win.
The government has started a new policy of golden visas for foreign talents .... and if u are a foreigner recruited from abroad you will have a great salary +++. But let let say u are a foreigner who , naively , thought to enroll in one MBA program in Taipei and than u go out to look for a job .... you will be considered a local , therefore regular low salary ..... there is a congenital attitude of the Taiwanese to appreciate what comes from abroad ( foreign and mostly white ) and much less what is local talent !
Ok. ,here's my list of why on macro level, and if the corporations/government can address these then there might be a fix: 1) Taiwanese dollars are undervalued for the purpose of boosting exports, while this policy can be effective on numerical level, it undermines what makes a country competitive, that is make good products, and it affects negatively on real salary in Taiwan. 2) Taiwanese top companies are too "capitals intensive", for example like TSMC, they need to put their profits back into the companies compared to western counterparts. They are basically in the market for "race to zero" to see who can product the most quantities with lowest price/high quality. This is because in Taiwan, hardware companies still dominate over software companies. There's relatively low "soft power" for Taiwan's companies in terms of their marketing and research development. 3) Taiwanese resident taxes are too high and they focus on the wrong productivity. In countries such as Taiwan, to attract foreign investment should be the No.1 goal. You should have very low capital gain tax and even 0, like Singapore and Hong Kong, and very low corporate taxes for foreign companies. You should reduce significant regulations when it comes to non-China investment. The taxes should be levied heavily on properties. The government should take very drastic steps towards discouraging property investments. 4) Taiwan import taxes are too high. If we reduce import taxes by a large amount, the real salary will increase. They should start getting rid of the 100% automobile import taxes. 5) Taiwan should get rid of half of their "universities". And have more technical schools and also post-grad learning. 6) Taiwan should spend a lot more on the military. Yes, contrary to public belief, spending on military can boost economy significantly, it is basically what killed the Great Depression. And Taiwan needs it. In Taiwan, most government expenditures can be moved to this category instead of spending on useless subjects. 7) Transparency. Even the government is working on it, it is still not enough: The workers should get more transparency and have more freedom to quit the companies fast if they think they are underpaid. They need to list the salaries for all sectors and make workers aware of their values in the economy. There are more, but I will rest my case for now
This video recently went viral for some reason. Please comment thoughtfully and respectfully.
Since you are all here, I suggest watching my video about Taiwan's universal health care system: th-cam.com/video/_dKa9j3wsS8/w-d-xo.html A really great thing about Taiwan that the US should emulate. I'd rather make a lot less a year but get easy, convenient universal health care. Wouldn't you?
One more thing: Salary is not the end-all, be-all. Otherwise we would all be anesthesiologists in Sweden. The last thing I want viewers to think is that I hate it here or that Taiwan is a terrible place to live. It really is an amazing place. "I like this place a lot" is literally the second thing I said.
Commenting as I go, so please forgive if you mention later.
Please convert NTD to USD or GBP for the non-taiwanese viewers. Thank you.
Not sure why this randomly popped up on my youtube recommendations, but I'm glad. Pretty objective analysis.
Excellent video! The YT algorithm strikes gold again.
The situation in Taiwan sounds similar to japan. They’re robbing from the young to pay the promises made to the older generations (via salaries, benefits and pensions, etc) during the boom times of the 80s and 90s.
In japan, it’s not just low wages but low everything. They use contractor positions to avoid paying out the same benefits the real (old) employees still get.
Salary versus Housing prices are insane. Maybe can do a vid on that? Great work btw!
No wonder a lot of Taiwanese went to work in China. It pays a lot better.
One of the overlooked reason is that parents push kids for white collar jobs, so the competition for desk jobs are fierce thus supply/demand drive salary down. This is why entry level desk job like bank tellers pay very little. Trade jobs actually pay very well in Taiwan because there is a shortage of workers, but social stigma and upbringing make people don't want to do it.
That, but also industrial hygiene in Taiwan is mostly (with some exceptions for international investors projects from Europe/USA) extremely poor, so such jobs are not only dirty and hot, but could cause long term health issues from carcinogens, teratogens, etc; exposing the worker and the worker's off-spring. Using third world labour instead of addressing the safety/health is the preferred solution.
Its actually the same in counties like Canada.
Same here in the US.
Certified welding, handyman work (electrician-HVAC-plumbing), electronics/equipment repair, commercial diving, and industrial technician work all pay well and are in high demand.
In America there is an insane demand for people to do white collar jobs or be some kind of technician. People all want a white collar job but the world is increasingly filled with robots that need people to maintain them. Welding is a laughably under-served industry with salaries higher than experienced desk jockeys.
This really accelerated when women came into the workforce. They don't value themselves and seem happy to work for less. They are driving wages down.
I have worked in Japan for more than 5 years and they really over value tenure. There is automatic promotion based on 年功序列 for many companies, so you often get managers who have no business leading anything get thrown into a position they are completely unqualified for. On top of that, it is almost impossible to fire anyone, so people will just coast in a company for 20-30 years, become a manager and really muck things up. Since most of the management is elderly, they are really behind the times in many aspects as well. So there is a huge percentage of unproductive tech-illiterate old people running the daily workings of many Japanese companies.
I have been working for a Japanese company for 2 years and your characterization could not be more true.
I work in a Japanese company based in Singapore and what you described is so true. These people get promoted to positions of managers not because they are qualified to lead. They just there long enough and curry favor the right person to get there.
@@Aurica34 "curry favor the right person to get there."
That happens everywhere.
I also confirm that. I work with Japanese for 5 years now and this is sad truth. It is also common to stay at one company for majority if not whole life so there is no dynamic or competition among workers for promotion.
Then why is japan the third largest economy in the world?
.. I lived in Taiwan for 4 years, the salary is not that much but the perks as a citizen and residents are good, free medical coverage for all people, no need to buy drugs, free hospitalization, food is affordable, computers and appliances are very affordable, transportation is quite cheap, and standards as a society is very high... so what else do you need....
Very true. I should make it more clear in the video.
You are right ! There are plenty positive elements .... the other problem is that natality is going down dramatically , houses are unaffordable ( at least in Taipei ) and young people do not have changes to build a future for themselves ..... but this happens everywhere not only Taiwan
Hey there I am from Denmark, I am not sure how we pull it off but we also have free education including university, hospitals and so on. But we are also getting paid a relative high amount. An average couple in Denmark with 2 children earns 4,456,442.Ntd a year before taxes.
Wages we have in Taiwan are enough to make a living inside Taiwan, but with the education we have we can easily make a lot more outside. Me for example got my university education in NA and decided to stay there just because the wages I get there is more than doubled; although I loved living in Taiwan but from a personal financial perspective it is just not a realistic decision to stay in Taiwan if you had the chance.
This problem in the short term we have talented people in the country getting way less than what they deserved compare to the rest of the world, and in the long term leads to talent draining away from the country making us less competitive and prone to lose our value to the world, which makes us vulnerable to a array of geopolitical issues given our situation.
In my opinion Taiwan is a very typical case of involution.
The problem is that Taiwanese ppl love to buy foreign products. (Middle income trap) This is when they feel they are poorer than the rest of the world.
Low wages, poor benefits, excruciating working hours and the least amount of paid leaves (in the world!) drove me to leave Taiwan, for my own health and future. Very sad but a decision that had to be made.
Pay should be relative to cost of living. Also, thats an Asian thing that Ive noticed in most Asian cultures--working yourself to death. Also US has a horrible work-life balance, but Asian countries are worse.
how many day of paid leaves per year in Taiwan?
Too many older voters eating there young.
@@SkyHermit according to the labor law, after 6 months of working you'll get 3 days, after 1 full year of working you'll get 7 days. You'll get +1 day off for each additional year when you're working in the same company. It's sad
@@dexterwidjojo2933 that is so low!
My aunt worked and retired as the head of accounting department for a major architectural and construction company in Taipei. When she retired, her pension was a lot less than I thought. She explained that her salary wasn’t not that much more than her subordinates. She explains because company have to pay pension based on salary, so managers are compensated via bonuses and gifts so they can bypass certain government taxes and labor costs. That’s what most privately held companies in Taiwan operate and compensate.
intimidated Britain to
th-cam.com/video/QwL1V93xXm0/w-d-xo.html
Defined benefit pensions strangle mature companies. Define contribution are sustainable.
So bascially you hop on a plane to go to Singapore, and do the things you do in Taiwan, you get paid 3x. So to increase your value, the only skill you need to learn is how to buy a plane ticket.
Ha, I tried once to find a job in Singapore. It’s so much harder than you say
The pay in Singapore is better, but cost of living is much higher.
@@jia2001 Here's a math question: In Taiwan, your salary is $2000 usd and living costs is $1000 usd. In Singapore, your salary is $4000 but your living expanses also double to $2000. Which one saves more money? Do the math. Higher/lower living costs does not matter, it matters how much money you have left after your salary. And having lived in both Taipei and Singapore, in Singapore, you will save at least twice as much, doing the exact same thing, as a foreigner, not to mention if you are Singaporean.
@@Gindaman999 save up the 2000usd and return to taiwan every 6 months to spend all of them
You need working permit to work in Singapore. If it's that simple, you will see 100 million workers coming from India, Malaysia, China, and Taiwan.
I got interested in this video because working for Taiwanese companies in the same industry was much worse than working for mainland Chinese companies. I saw far more bullying and antagonism towards employees, expecting as an American that the two cultures were similar. I was surprised that living a democracy did not improve labor conditions. Here, political leadership and regulatory capture, the sociological factors, play far more of role than economic metrics or culture. After all, socioeconomic status is negotiated and wrangled in market economies rather than being automatically dispensed based on economic metrics.
I wouldn't say the US labor standards are that good either. We have plenty of bodys under our rug we ignore by choice too. Democracy itself doesn't really guarantee any workers protections.
The US had to have thousands die for simple things like an 8 hour day and even that isn't uniformly enforced or anything. The only way for a democracy to have good labor protection is to fight constantly for it, and unfortunately it is in the interest of the government to ignore those demands at almost any cost. The government will move the scale back in favor of the employer as fast as possible so if the population stops constantly fighting it those protections dissappear fast.
Taiwan people don't need that much salary at all since the free medical coverage and education
'democracy' has become a code word for 'subordinated to USA', and has nothing to do with participation or voice. you mention that you thought the two cultures are similar? how exactly is a country thousands of miles away that has always been part of china be culturally similar to USA? that's an odd expectation!
@@the80386 no truer word's been spoken
@@the80386 I think he means he thought Taiwan and China would be culturally similar.
worked in Taiwan for five years in it's computer industry. my own experience tells me that in Taiwan's work culture, most companies see employees more like a disposable resource. in other word, employee is part of the "cost" and not as an asset, at least most of the companies and boss are like that. When cost cutting is often a way for them to stay competitive, then it's just natural for the wage to be kept artificially low.
Not try to piss anyone off here about the work environment in Taiwan. This is just my own experience and opinion. It was a good working experience overall. just unfortunately sometimes these Taiwan business owner treat employee like a disposable item more so than in western companies.
I have worked in Taiwan too and I completely agree with your statement, felt very sad for my coworkers that have such low wages and holidays for all the time they spend in the company.
Same with all Chinese businesses profit is more important to them.. if they can cut big the expenses and no ones bothering them they will do it because no ones complaining
Treating workers as disposable is so true. This happens in most Chinese companies.
My two cents on Taiwan's anemic wage growth: As Taiwan's labor cost was about to go up in late 80s to early 90s, the island's capital naturally went to mainland China and SE Asia, and the government did nothing to intervene. As a result, no enough capital for developing future generation of tech or financial company, and workers' pay stagnated.
True that HTC, Acer, TSMC, and ASUS etc. were founded there, but their main R&D, factories and customers were outside the island.
The higher the government pump the wage up, the more the job transfers to oversea. You used a lot of words to coney a stupid logic.
The majority of R&D and manufacturing of TSMC are done in Taiwan.
@@renchin2266you cite one example, and an example with national security implications. Taiwan couldn’t offshore it even if it wanted to because the US wouldn’t allow Taiwan to move to a unfriendly or even neutral country.
Wage stagnation in all East Asia is related to China’s economic opening. Add that to your analysis and you’ll find Taiwan Japan Korea HK and Singapore stagnant while China’s workers wages catch up to those economies. We’re in the mist of this balancing or equalization.
Indeed. Production shifted to lower wage China. Now Chinese wages must catch up before wages in these countries rise.
@@ajitharidas9496 but their ageing population is accelerating that wage growth
I am singaporean and our wages has not been stagnating like you say. Fresh grad wages has been increasing year on year yearly increment is 2 to 3 percent (for this not having promotion) so I have no idea what you are talking about
@@meklavier4664 2 or 3 % is less then inflation
@@willempasterkamp862 really like people commenting without finding out Singapore inflation. 1980 to 2020 average inflation in Singapore is 2.27 percent.
I've studied in Taipei for 6 months and from what I've observed in restaurants and stores, Taiwanese people are really hard working. Stores have fewer employees compared to other places but they move really fast. Students also study A LOT. After schools, they still take up more classes like English and Math (my friends teach English). It's sad that even with all the work they do, it seems like it's still not enough for social mobility. 🙁
There are a lot of small businesses in Taiwan. Everyone wants to be their own boss there (especially the older generation). Who wouldn't want to do this and take a chance when the wages of working for someone else is so low.
But this also means that you will need to wear multiple hats every day. You're the CEO, but you're also the accountant, the sales man, the cook, the laborer, etc. Not everyone is good at everything, that means they will be spending time doing work that is not at their peak productivity. But I do believe that these businesses earn more than your average wage, and isn't factored into that average wage statistic.
I remember my grandparents operating a store in Taiwan in the 70's and 80's and the rent for their store is at least NT$40000. I remember them complaining about it. That is already close to the average wage in the 2010's and it was 30-40 years ago. And they were able to pay it month after month and build up savings for retirement, support themselves, raise their kids (my parents, aunts and uncles). So they are earning much more than that while sitting in their store (and home) and have plenty of down time between customers for leisure (TV watching, etc.)
That's nothing. In Sweden, IT salaries have been the same since 1980 but housing prices have went up like 10,000% since then. Depressing country.
Thomas Piketty strikes again.
What no way Sweden is one pf the best countries in the world
Isn't tax there very high as well?
Sweden life is better than Taiwan
Yeah but 1980s Sweden was really really wealthy
There’s a similar issue with salary and seniority in Japan. It’s good for company loyalty, but the best performers go to businesses where they are rewarded for efforts over seniority
80-90s Taiwan work 6 days a week. Now it is only 5 days a week.
i dont know any countries with above average modern economy working 6 days.
I remember going to school on Saturdays in Taiwan. But for students, I believe it is a short day on Wed. and Sat. At least for elementary school only. But people work all week until Sunday.
@@claus1225 I think Singapore had a 6 day week until 2004
only if you work for a company run by a foreigner. Most local jos still expects you to work overtime such as HTC
the law have changed but alot of local company will say that doesn't apply
Good insight.
I set my mind long ago that I should pursue a career in the west because in Taiwan for a normal employee there’s virtually no chance for you to have a financially sufficient life.
I met my wife who’s a US citizen and working in Taiwan. We both believe this place is definitely not the place for our family(we consider owning a house a must). It’s cheap in general but if you look at our wages it’s actually very expensive for an average Taiwanese person to live a comfortable life here.
I think most people feel the same that’s why Taiwan has the lowest fertility rate. That’s why a lot of people like us eventually leave Taiwan since they can’t really afford having children.
Germany did encourage its older workers in the 2000's to go early pension. It backfired because a lot of bigger companies lost after all still crucial old engeneering wisdom.
Hard to tell the future. I see many young Taiwanese with 2-3 credit cards being in perpetual debt, because their low wages can't sustain the lifestyle they desire.
When a job at 7-11 that doesn't require any training pays only marginally less than an entry position at even government institutions where you need a BA or MA, there is something very wrong.
In my opinion, it's not about productivity, but about a combination of greedy bosses and an oversupply of college educated people. I had Taiwanese companies offer me 50k NTD per month when I earned more than double in Germany. And I know a couple foreigners with the same experience as well as Taiwanese who went abroad to earn 2-3 times more than in Taiwan.
Young people are being shafted hard.
If you are making low wages, you will not appreciate money. It’s common for low paid workers to spend all the money. Because when you can’t fullfill real prosperity, your happiness can only come from brief and social enjoyment.
Das Kapital / Thomas Piketty strikes again
Are you white? Are you a foreigner? Because minimum wage of certain foreigners in Taiwan is 48K. It's a luxury that Taiwanese people often envy.
I started working for myself because the hourly payout I get working for myself is literally 10 times that I get from working for a boss in Taiwan. I do guitar repair, and I make more in 1 hour doing that than 8 hours working at 7-11. Also jobs requiring a BA or even MA is paying maybe 20% more than a full time job at 7-11, which is really making it pointless to even want to get a BA considering the amount of studying one must do in Taiwan to get into a decent university. Plus the working hour is insane, if you have to quit your job to get a week off, something's not right.
But on the other hand I'm seeing lots of ads recruiting service jobs for very close to 200nt per hour, with a monthly salary of over 35,000 a month if working full time. When I first came back to Taiwan everyone was advertising less than 65nt per hour with pretty much every single jobs advertising that rate. I had gotten a job at Family Mart working graveyard shift for 90nt per hour and I still had to work 50 hours a week to make barely 19,000 per month. Not going back to those days again. Much rather starve and take my chances with translation work.
Taiwanese people sort of adopt a Japanese working culture where the boss or seniors has absolute power. Fairness aside if the people in charge knows what they are doing then this might give an overall plus for everyone. The problem is these decision maker in Taiwan has enjoyed power for too long and Instead of thinking about how to innovate all they know how to improve earning is cut cost or abuse the employees. According to what my friends told me in Vancouver there there are working holiday programs for oversea workers and from what I know Taiwanese workers are the most sought after. Why? Because they can take the most abuse and fights back the least amount. The employers would often choose workers from Taiwan over Philippines or Vietnam two countries that has 1/5th to 1/10th GDP per capital because Taiwanese workers are more docile. This is freaking sad.
Taiwan factory workers mostly Filipinos..
@@franciscoverra2307 that's very true.. that's a whole other layer of the Taiwanese society exploitation that you don't hear much of. Someone should do a video on that.. I know for sure the XYZ Da Vinci brand 3d printers are all made by cheap Filipino labor that are all cramped in tiny dirty dormitories. Most of the janitorial works are all done by the Filipinos too, and they get treated really bad by the Taiwanese who hired them.
That´s not a Japanese trait, but a confusion trait.
Confucian.
With that work culture the corporation don’t want to lose Taiwan as a vassal state. In the East historically there has always been more workers then farm land leading to the work culture of everyone is replaceable. In Western Civilization after the Black Plague came through, the population dropped 40% and workers were not replaceable leading to a more healthy work culture. This also led the push to colonization, since the elite couldn’t squeeze the peasants so they looked overseas to grow there fortune. China initially didn’t want to open to the West and initially limited traded to Canton and would only trade products for silver which was a problem for the British. So they started growing opium in India and flooding it in China to get back the silver. There was then the Opium Wars between the British and China and as a result the British got Hong Kong.
Here in the united states there has been wage stagnation for decades, since the 90s
But I think the situation here in America is sort of like, if not much more serious than, the likes of HK & Japan, where individual workers' productivity increased but they aren't paid much more for that increase
Well corporate profits are at an all time high in the united states and wage growth has decoupled
Worse is the dollar being printed like nothing and the money flows through the banks into the hands of investors to pump and create an environment of endless asset price inflation
I think not. Wages are increasing in the US since the 90s(end of the boom) at the same rate as Inflation. Also, US productivity has remained almost the same.
@@CoolMan-ig1ol asset price inflation is like stocks, bonds, commodities, property not average day things like clothes, food
Taiwan apparently inherited a lot of Japanese work culture.
I was surprised by the cost of living in Taiwan after living in Beijing for so long. Almost everything was cheaper, which really shocked me.
Salaries are potato in taiwan sort of speak , some are less than $1.000 per month but cost for housing and many other things .. crazy high
@@Grumpycat95 really??? How come when I search for Taiwan average income it’s so much higher?
@@iamsheep minimum wage is 30.000NT ($978 US) , I am laterally living in Taipei , many confessed they can’t simply get past 30-32.000 , even if you found a better pay , work insurance and health insurance plus other taxes will eat everything down till you get to the same sum that is .. minimum wage
@@Grumpycat95 damn! Well in that case it’s a good thing food is cheaper then.
I was on a merchant ship that drydocked in Kaohsiung some years ago, and I really liked it. I'm sorry to hear incomes are poor. The Taiwanese are great people, and I hope I can go back someday.
My parents have said that they think both Taiwan & S Korea have too many universities & their their workforce is overqualified, intensifying competition for jobs
Education is never too much; when you created highly educated labor force but failed to create jobs, the problem is definitely not the education system
Agree. It is simply because jobs and manufactures moved to China that lead to China's prosperity and left rest of world GDP goes down including USA. All other reasons are trivial.
because smart people is working hard to replace every job on earth with robots and AI. even their own jobs can go away if their own AI can do it better than them. Warren Bennis Quotes The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog.
@@nehcooahnait7827 The education system is a major problem when the standards of higher education are low. There are many 'newly' setup universities in TW eager to draw students, whereby admission standards are low. Businesses know those graduates cruise through the four years at college and didn't learn much so why would they be willing to pay higher wages. Of course there's always other issues like a stagnant economy not producing enough higher level jobs. Nevertheless, if those graduates are of good quality than they can find good paying jobs in other countrie just computer graduates of IIT in India are sought after by US companies. Therefore, the main issue TW graduates are paid poorly are their poor standard of university education.
@BGGFW CHK This made me chuckle. What people generally refer to as the Golden age of the US happened in the 1950s and 1960s when the US was on top of the world in conceivably every economic indicator. There were a lot of reasons for this with manufacturing prowess being one of them. Those days have gone and trying to bring back manufacturing, while it would help in the long term for not being as dependent on fragile global trade, isn't going to bring the US back to that period of time. "The curse of the baby boomers" as I like to say. They overall still expect so much in a time where the rules have monumentally shifted. The promise of ever increasing prosperity isn't a reality any more unfortunately.
Like Germany, Taiwan keep the inflation artifically low, meaning low wages and competitive in international market.
Yes, inflation will definitely help. If TWD is 1:20 to USD, the job market will be very different
Taiwan province has quite a lot of farming, so food is cheap. Also, outside Taibei there're tonnes of cheap labour in the province, so no need to pay much to get the workers do the jobs.
@@xander2890 That is like saying the rain is wet.
no your high skilled labour force will just go elsewhere.
@@richwu6752 You are partially right. In my Taiwan group of highly skilled engineers, 2 went to China, one went to Korea and back, two remained in Taiwan. Study of economics is often relative, and and never 100% one way or the other.
In Taiwan inflation has been low, medical care is very affordable, food prices are moderate and stable, housing costs aren't nearly as high as in many other countries, and transportation is cheap. So wages remain average. Except for parts of Taipei, the cost of living is fairly low. But then again, the government has been way too tight with minimum wage increases due to pressure from companies wanting to cut operational costs. The GDP is quite low but living conditions are stable except for the threats from China.
Taiwan has become expensive. Anybody would tell you that, especially cost of living inflation, yet the salaries haven't changed in 20 years.
inflation ain't low at all. See the housing prices compared to the salary and see how many years they need to pay for a mortgage. LOL.
You remind me of a story of a boy who throws stones at a sleeping bear, then complain that the bear is a "threat" when it wakes up and bites you.
Very interesting video! I lived in Taiwan during the pandemic. I was essentially “stuck” there due to circumstances. I applied and was awarded the Gold Card in the Arts/Culture category. I witnessed a lot of things that you mentioned in my industry (music) and I thought so much about the situation in Taiwan. The arts industry in Taiwan is extremely weak, the weakest in all the countries I’ve visited, and I pondered this question so much. I saw so much incompetence from people in power. I actually made the news at the end of last year for starting a protest to change some of the stupid rules in the MRT system regarding instrument transportation. I left Taiwan as soon as I could because it was extremely depressing to be there. I spent 2 1/2 years stuck there, as soon as I could resume my economic activities I left. I am 3 months away from being eligible for permanent residency but I am not sure I am even willing to come back and do those 3 months. I openly talked a lot about the incompetency in Taiwan during my stay. Lots of people were definitely offended, but lots of local Taiwanese privately messaged me to thank me for saying what they cannot say because it would harm their career prospects. A lot of the best that Taiwan has to offer, left Taiwan already, or are yearning to leave. It is very sad
Thing about Taiwan is you can’t quite criticize too openly, especially if you were living elsewhere prior. As you mentioned, a lot of people knows “problems” but none are willing to do anything about them. A major reason why Taiwan not only stagnates in salary.
Thought Taiwan/ROC has a mature Chinese pop music industry that attracts Chinese singers from other territories too such mainland China, Malaysia, Singapore e.g. By2, Ivy Lee, Tanya Chua (though its facing competition from K-pop)
@@lzh4950 Yes you are right, my original comment wasn’t very nuanced. There’s a lot that can be said about Taiwan’s multilayered music scene. The commercial pop scene is definitely very thriving, but it is the general industry in general and the other layers. A lot of it has to do with mentality and general low standards. For example, I just came back from Nashville which is one of the world’s music capitals. What I saw there was a very tight community of musicians encouraging each other, pushing each other to always be better for the sake of growth. In Taiwan, there is 擦不多I(close enough) culture that really bothered me. Of course, just because Taiwan has a bad music scene also doesn’t mean that there are not great people doing great music. Such people are more of an exception; I’m referring to a general atmosphere. I think having talked to a lot of people in different industries, it’s the same observation. There’s a lot of politics (as there is everywhere else) and the kind of politics that sometimes discourages talented people who then chose or yearn to leave.
@@lzh4950 that ser was during the jay chou era...say 10-20 years ago. now it isnt.
I worked in both HK and Shenzhen China. I must say, HK and China's competition is cut throat. Performance and data will determine the employee's year end bonus and the right to remain in the company. Literally, the bottom 10% would be cut from the company.
Tenure means little here. If one is 60 and can still bring in the numbers, he can work till his 70s if he wants to.
I've met people in their 40s and 50s getting cut from the company because they can't compete with young staff that are putting in more hours, working on weekends, going the extra miles to keep customers happy, improving themselves and building up their own team and network.
As a Taiwanese individual who lived overseas for more than a decade - I can confirm that the wages didn’t change much in the past 5 years.
The economy isn’t helping us at all because there’s an existing toxic relationship between employers and employees. Employees get paid so little, while holding a job that translates to 2-3 people’s positions together. Employers don’t trust the employees and tend to hold onto traditional work values - crushing deadlines, a lack of company culture, and a lack of creativity.
intimidated Britain to
th-cam.com/video/QwL1V93xXm0/w-d-xo.html
Don't live in Taipei. There are dozens of cities outside the capital that cost half for almost everything.
Yeah,but very few job though ,and the company often didn't compliance with Labor Law.
Yeah, just be a farmer/factory worker/shop cashier when living in other parts of the province outside Taibei.
@@xander2890 You mean “country” not province.
@@xander2890 ...or, make your own job. Start a business and prosper. No need to rely on others to make a job just for you and also pay you heaps!
For better or worse when wages no longer rising then many politicians (worldwide) will focus on nationalism. I think Taiwan low wages as you said is due greatly to being so close to China and having similar culture/language so it is easier for the brightest to open up their business or to work in China especially since China government gives many incentives to attract those individuals.
If people in Taiwan are leaving for greener pastures in other countries then that should BOOST wages in Taiwan as companies try and retain their workforce
Wow....so taiwan's low salary is China's to blame? HAHAHAHAHAHA
@@shazmosushi reality and belief is very different
Actually, rather than labor flight, I believe capital flight may be a factor. Due to cultural and linguistic proximity, it’s much easier for an established Taiwanese firm to open a new factory in China (as opposed to say, a Western firm). So the capital flight has been relatively more severe. Hopefully, in 2021, as Taiwanese firms reestablish themselves in Taiwan, this will help raise local wages.
@@lancewood1410 well it is Taiwan’s government to blame but mainland China’s economy is one of the the causes. In mainland China’s big cities they just objectively pay higher than Taiwanese companies overall
Excellent video. I have been working in Taiwan for 22 years as a teacher… still working at a salary of NT$ 65,000… same wages as 22 years ago.
@@shaolintseng3300would you mind tell me how much you or your friends earn？
Using average for salary is misleading and often overestimates. The median salary is lower than 46000.
True
@qtsssim Perhaps. But generally for non-normally distributed variables, I prefer to use median, first quartile, and third quartile.
@qtsssim You can think of the first quartile as the 25th percentile, median as the 50th percentile, third quartile as the 75% percentile
When salary is almost the same as 20 years ago.......
@@Jesus-wi4we Yeah and might I add the inflation rate is not low in Taiwan. smh
Basically, the commodity of labour is also under the forces of demand-supply. The level of economic activities is not enough to generate the demand for labour. Somebody is hungry enough to accept the job for lower price.
Brain drain stemming from a desire for Taiwanese independence, leading to low corporate investment (political instability), low productivity growth (low investment), leading to low pay behind the brain drain. Lots of talented Taiwanese working in Mainland China, Hong Kong, the US, etc.
Taiwan’s Economy boomed when Taiwanese people helped produced many finished products for the World during 1981 - 1990. Then many companies and factories relocated to China in the ‘90s, and many Taiwanese and their money went with them. This hurt the economy in Taiwan, and this is the main reason why salaries in Taiwan had remained low for so many years. What used to be Taiwan’s productivities and economic activities relocated to China since the ‘90s. Hi-tech industry started its move in early 2000. Taiwan then became only the office for taking orders from customers and maybe a place to do research and development.
What you said sounds right at first, then it’s total non-sense in fact. You may said all those money and companies flow to China did affect Taiwan’s economy in 90’s, but after 2 decades, you still believe that’s the reason, I would say you are totally a loser, doesn’t take the responsibility to fix the problem. In 70 & 80’s, Taiwan government used to plan out a meaningful economic plans and policies, and Taiwanese rolled up sleeves, working hard to build up the amazing economy in Taiwan. However, in the past 20+ years, Taiwanese were too crazy about politics, picked up incompetent government to guide you, you are still working hard, but in wrong directions, you are still working hard, but hammering on the wrong spot. You need to find some people with real global visions to be the government to guide the people and companies. Not just choose some persons only know know how to fake education degree to deceive ppl. China may the cause to erupt Taiwan economic balance at first, but not the reason to use it as a scapegoat to cover your failure forever
@@TheNingfeiyang Truly
I know lots of university students in Taiwan are simply incompetent due to the education environment.
Students are under intense pressure in high school learning about something that has absolutely no value in the work force. Since they are under immense amount of pressure in high school, students in Taiwanese universities focus on leisure time, which is the polar opposite of the reason of pursuing a higher education.
I also agree the inability to work under pressure unlike the former generation. it is upsetting that I am describing my very best friends in Taiwan. However, most of them simply lack the basic skills in a profitable economy
Thanks for your great answer. I’ve shared it to my friends as well.
Maybe depends on the universities your friends attended. My daughter and son attend top universities in Taiwan and so far I am quite satisfied with the education. I myself attended HS and college in the US and I think the fundamental education (undergraduate level) that my children are having now are actually better than what I had. And when I compare the syllabus in my daughter's major with the syllabus of universities in the US of the same major, the classes she is taking in undergrad level are offered in graduate level in the US. But best of all is, both my daughter and my son have become more motivated to continue studying to grad school. I think one of the indications of good education is, it encourages rather than discourage ppl to learn more. Btw, they major in science and engineering.
I am from Taiwan and recently graduated from high school and will attend university this year.
I think your point about high pressure academic environment in highschool is partly true, but with the steady decline of new born, the competition is also less and less tougher as time goes by.
The main problems are that in Taiwan, every highschool student want to study either medical or EECS.
For example, in my class, about two third of student study EECS and medical, do everyone loves it? Maybe just to meet social expectations.
And the development of our industries are pretty unbalanced, most industries other then semiconductors pay poorly while the boss reaping a great amount of wealth. So yes, the gdp is growing every year, but the money don't go to average people's hands, instead, those
money go to real estate market.
@@lizbennet90 Thanks for sharing, I'm glad you're happy with the education your kids are getting. I think there no doubt the tip notch education in Taiwan is very successful. Take STEM and medical field as examples, they produce one of the best or the best professions in the industry. What I'm worry about is outside of those fields, schools, the average, or even above average students are still lacking behind on the global stage. Most of the Universities in Taiwan just simply don't train students to be competitive enough for the industry but rather focus on things like, awards, admissions, scores and things that just doesn't matter.
If they are able to get close to what the courses that your kids are in, it would be the interest for the taiwanese society
@@whatthehellisthis6245 Yoooo! Congrats on the graduation bruh!
Yeah I agree the industry developement is quite imbalanced at this moment. The STEM field is very interesting but other than that, I really don't understand why the huge gap.
I really think it's likely how competitive high school acedemic system is. It is leaving students having no time to figure out what they like, have an interest or like do extra curriculum that actually matters for their future. I've been out of that system for almost a decade so I'm pretty sure you are more insightful on the subject matter but I'm just not really sure if taiwanese high school/university are guiding students to focus their energy on things that actually matters
8:15 You say every country in the world except the US needs to worry about low wages and brain drain. The US isn't a monolith: rust belt states have very different economic outlooks to some of the wealthy coastal cities. This economic divide helps power Trump success
Right. If you wanna be more specific when I say the USA, then I’d say something like “five coastal cities and Austin”.
@@Asianometry Yeah that's fair enough. I usually wouldn't be so pedantic but this American economic divide (and the feeling of being left behind) has caused so much political upheaval in recent years
It’s for a different video (one I probably won’t make because this isn’t an America focused channel) but I feel the political divide is more complicated than just economics. Adjusted for PPP, incomes of the worst performing states are in the same neighborhood as the top European countries. If I were to better characterize what’s happening in the states, I’d call it more a cultural divide. Some of Trump’s top supporters are financially well off but regardless feel an immense fear of the changes going on in their country.
when income rises to a certain degree I think people start comparing themselves to others around them or more recently what they see on tv/internet. Also USA wages may be higher (compared to much of world) but so is much of the necessary expenses like education, medical, housing...which is why some Americans are retiring overseas.
South Korea is trying to boost wage by raising minimum wage. And it worked in a degree. Wage gap is reduced and some low wage industry is being "adjusted". There were outcry of small and medium business but overall wage level and productivity are boosted. I think that Taiwan also need similar measure.
They do increasing minimum wage every year like South Korea , and wage level still much lower than SK , but Taiwan's living cost even much lower .
Korea is just a Chinese province.
Its still way higher than most country.
Just compare the low wage to even lower wages, and you are doing fine.
Did you convert to your currency or USD? It is listed in Taiwan dollars.
have you been to taiwan? it's not better than most countries.
But in OECD countries or Developed World i think it’s not higher, Chile even might have high salary than Taiwan.
因為台灣的民選政府選上的主要任務 就是維持國內低物價的現狀 薪資很難快速增加
Wage inequality is a globally phenomenon. It is the product of government policies that tilted toward the rich corporations vs. the little guys. My 2 cents opinion. As in the US, the rich gets richer, the poor get poorer.
A friend of mine who is an engineer here in Taiwan explained to me that companies in engineering sector force their employees to constantly study the new technology and methodologies. If they don't or can't pass the exam at the end of the period they're let go. Just one example of the ways they have been able to circumvent ageism
I think it's important that an engineer stay up to date with new technologies. To me, that's not circumventing ageism. That's competency. Would you want someone building your bridge with things they learned in the 1970s?
I grew up in Taiwan and recently discovered your channel. I got top marks at the SAT-equivalent tests when entering college and ended up working in healthcare although I was much more interested in CS. The salary stagnation is also felt in the healthcare jobs here although you don't hear that much because the pay is generally high to begin with. But the consensus among my high school friends were that the iron grip the government choking the health care cost, though come at the cost of line workers' living standard, was the last thing keeping the society afloat and unrest down. Part of which the reason the brain drain in healthcare is also rampant. Many seek job in the US, Australia, Canada, Britain.
Very interesting! Though I don't understand why one would try to explain the stagnant real wages with different "unproductivity theories". You just said that the productivity is increasing, but the workers share of the profit is not. The older generation can keep their salaries, just increase the workers share, and give it to the younger generation. This is a conflict between the capital owners and the workers, and explanations like the workers are ineffective, or that some workers are doing to well, do not hold up, but are an efficient diversion from the real problem.
I was waiting for some labor theory of value in this comments section. I, for one, am here for it.
You should have translated that 47.000 taiwanese currency to $ or euros, so that one may have an idea about the value.
Singapore allows foreigners and immigrants such that a good majority of locals becomes managers of them. Is that simple. They also attract talents to compete with locals in measured ways. This keep their productivity up.
No idea why the TH-cam algorithm sent me here, but glad it did
Same here
This is such a complex topic to cover but you did a great job bringing several key points. I was making more teaching English in Taipei than my smart engineering friends (that shouldn’t have to be the case anywhere). Taipei was super expensive for the common salary, but you can branch out into the many suburbs which get much cheaper.
But the low wages rhetoric has consumed my own time in Taiwan researching and I keep hitting the “low innovation” despite what we hear about how Taiwan dominates the global cheap market, as an example. The deep “family” society makes it so that you get generations are not feeling “forced” to innovate or go the “extra mile” as they have a net to fall upon at all times. Nonetheless, the case in Taiwan baffled me the more I lived there as I really expected a Singapore-type income society but I found a lot more societal financial struggles than I anticipated
Great video as always! It did make me curious for the reasons of Taiwanese emigration, perhaps that could be a topic for a future video?
@Sl Mi don't call Taiwan an american colony
It's technically a satellite state
@@felixsubakti6907 It is tho, just like Japan and South Korea. They don´t have choice.
The GDP per capita in Taiwan is higher than many countries in their area.
It is around 54, 000 US where China is around 16,000 US. My daughter
taught English there and traveled around Asia for two years, she was taken
by Taiwan and how well they were doing.
Dude thats is PPP, What about nominal?
@@ASK-ko9qx Going by wikipedia, they
give three variants.
As an expat in Taipei and an employer too. I have come across this discussion a lot. Except for real estate everything else is cheap compared to neighbouring cities like Hong Kong, Shanghai or Seoul. Education, Health care, Electricity, Fuel prices, Public transportation, etc are not expensive in this region. I have lived in Singapore and Hong Kong enough years to understand the difference. And being an employer I understand the difficulty of paying salaries. Almost 80% of the small business owners pay more salary than the income they draw for themselves. This is the truth, If minimum wage is increased again, we will just see more 'shop space for rent' boards as we already see way too many. Also, I wish English teaching expats and youtubers grasp a better idea about this than just say things like the money is not going to the workers. In a fight with big corporations regarding them paying less salary to their employees, small businesses come to their streets along with their families. Taiwanese companies need to pay more salary and Taiwanese businesses have to at least survive.
I'm with you on your take. One thing I would add is the government policies in tw that drive the minimum wage up. The "Sudo-capitalist with a blend of a socialist" tw government is obligated to too many pensions to the people, and they are doing some accounting fudging to ease off their loads. So they figured other than printing more money, they can create inflation on their currency to cheat off their debt to the people. At the same time, they want this to benefit not only the government, but to also attract those foreign big corporations especially in the tech industry like Google and yahoo, where the government can also benefit more from making those deals. Unfortunately small businesses (probably like you) and the landlords get hurt by that kind of strategy, which hurts the middle class that is the main driving force of the Taiwanese economy. I don't think it's much of a conspiracy to link the connections between corporations and the governments around the world in this global business environment that we live in today. It's not too hard to look up the names of those people who are proudly publicizing their credentials.
It's difficult make big Value from small business. Huge company make Huge Huge Value. Purchasing power parity will be higher, everything is cheaper. Whatever it's too many small businss. TSMC salary is good, that's different.
Sep 12, 2023 China outlines plan to make Fujian a zone for integrated development with Taiwan.
Do you think a million young islanders will move to the mainland to start a business?
Maybe there are too many potential candidates for each job requiring college. Over supply drives prices down.
I commend you for your genuine thoughtfulness. 👍🏼
Not my area of expertise but apparently the lack of economic growth in wages makes Taiwan a good target for greater mainland Chinese influence on the young population. It's already growing but China can take advantage of this.
Keep that CCP crap to yourself. No self respecting person in Taiwan wants that !@#$!!
The employment environment in Taiwan is quite deformed. If young people want higher salaries, they can only become doctors or develop into the electronics industry. Starting salaries in other industries are almost impossible to live on. Another worrying phenomenon is the low birth rate in Taiwan, which has made the problem of labor shortage even more serious.
As a member of a generation that has already seen two major recessions at the start of our career, it just feels like we're overworked, underpaid and, in general, lacking any trust that things will get better. Personally, at this point I just feel like we're waiting for older, richer, generations to retire.
But by the time they retire your generation will probably want to keep things as currently is since your next in line and would like to keep it as it has been. Sadly worldwide things will not change without major war, depression...to shake things up.
You spend too much time and resources on democracy. Political infighting is poisonous.
@@littledovecitydust one things doesn't have anything to do with the other. If you're from China just wait 20 years. You're going to be soon in the same boat, due to a demographic crisis (too many old people, not enough young people)
@@Sergiosanpr, be wary of the purveyors of the demographic doomsayers. They call for unlimited supply of youthful cheap labor because they refused to contribute their fair share to compensate their retiring workforce. In the current pandemic, it seems that they wish to get rid of 'this group of useless eaters'. This system has very little respect for their fellow human beings, because it's concentrated on profit and exploitation. Shouldn't we evolve into a more humane economic model where profit is not the main objective, but the living standards of the society as a whole?
@@littledovecitydust 5 mao dang spotted.
This reasons sounds solid to me: Taiwan relied on manufacturing unlike SG and HK that are relying more on finance or software.
Ever since China acceptance into the WTO, Taiwan's labor force couldnt compete with China's cheaper labor force hence Taiwan's salaries are low in the low tech industries. In the high tech industries I think salaries plus bonuses should be competitive otherwise TSMC would not have been able to retain its talent!
I lived 6 years in Taiwan, four in Changhua and two in Taipei
1) The obvious explanation would be the Chinese labour market drags down the wage level in Taiwan.
2) South Korean labour movement is more militant. Taiwanese trade union movement is very docile and ineffectual. Both government and enterprises make sure of such too.
3) Singaporean wage comparison data from official sources don't include huge number of guest workers (over 1m) doing menial jobs that pay much less.
4) Taiwanese government health, social welfare and educational provisions are much better than Singapore and South Korea. This is a substitute to income or transfer of government income to labour.
5) Taiwan also has very low charges for utilities, power, water and telecommunications as well as public transport. Effectively this boosts real labour income.
6) Stagnation in wage is common phenomenon across many nations. US has seen similar and worse. Australia too except with lower tax rate. Both however are helped by real lower costs to consumer products mostly imported from China.
7) Likely consumer goods also are lower in real costs from China in Taiwan. Hence there is no imperative to increase wages.
8) South Korea is rather protected as an Asian economy. Eg, one sees very few non-Korean brand cars in Korea. Virtually all white goods sold are of Korean brands. Even cinemas have to allocate 20% showing time, daily, to Korean films. This explains Hyundai, LG and many famed Korean films and K-pop stars.
9) This allows wider spread of growth to many more industries in Korea than in Taiwan which is very open to global competitions reducing likelihood of broader success in large number of industries domestically.
10) So strong labour demands in Korea apply to wider spread of industries keeping wages at good level.
11) North Korea as an issue is well exploited by the South Korean allowing such deep economic protectionism with US sanctions. US on the other hand wouldn't ever let Taiwan get away with this.
13) US accuses China of currency manipulation. Well, South Korea started in 1997. Its currency is still lower than before 1997. This forced both Japan and China to keep their currencies low. Again, the North Korean card is exploited here.
About South Korea, some points are valid, especially the militant labor movement.
But for others, you are just regurgitating the petrified stereotypes.
8)=> Definitely not true! Come to Korea and witness the insatiable taste for premium brand cars (mostly German). Other non-premium foreign brands are also well represented. Go to any department store. They are jam packed with foreign brand shops. Yes... you have to be "premium" in order to compete in Korea.. Korean shoppers have very discerning taste..
11)=> True during the cold war period! It has been a while since the cold war ended... right? Your mindset is stuck in 1980s playbook.
Just, give credit where it's due.... koreans being passionate and fast-movers, instead of spewing your own personal biases...
@@manullim indeed, it's either korean or German cars. Japanese cars come after
Signapor pay high salary ..you are wrong
Can’t speak for all Taiwanese. We went to visit a friend like 8 years ago. We thought she would need financial help, but when she took us to a restaurant, she was ordering lots of seafood and many other dishes. There was only 4 of us at the table, but she ordered like 8 dishes. My main point is, we were surprised when she pulled out her money to pay the bill. She had a stack full of $100 US bills. There was at least $2000 worth.
Right, income is not the same as wealth
Why would she be paying in USD in Taiwan? Fishy
Foreign Direct Investment is expectedly low.
Wage economics is simple.
The more companies willing to enter the Taiwanese market, the more demand there will be for workers. The more demand for workers...
But honestly why would they invest in Taiwan when there is the 1.4 billion market 90km away?
@@Amidat Pretty much China took away most jobs from ASEAN and taiwan lol
The textbook definition of economic output in the video ignores entrepreneurship. It's not just 'labor and capital'; it's the efficiency of resource allocation to meet demand that matters. Labor not even necessarily included.
This videos ignores a number of things. 1) wages have actually grown faster under Tsai IngWen than under Ma (the previous president whom they actually fell under for a while). Tsai has considerably increased minimum wages. 2) cost of living is always important and if it were not for property prices Taiwan would be surprisingly cheap. A more effective way to create economic equality in Taiwan would be property law reform (Taiwan's property laws are nuts but include very low taxes, bizarre zoning restrictions, a huge% of buildings being illegal/without licenses etc). 3) Taiwanese wages are low but in some ways people are better off (you can find a similar situation in say Singapore too) than some places like China because of better low cost health care and other government services.
Yeah I agree. If I were to do the video again I would include those things for sure.
People are definitely better off financially in Singapore. Comparing between Singpore citizens in Singapore and Taiwanese citizens in Taiwan. In Singapore, 90% of people own home, it’s common for people in 20s and 30s to own an apartment of 3 rooms. Even though costs are higher in Singapore, the difference in salaries will 100% ensure you have more savings. Savings turn into investment, etc and mind that Singapore has no capital gain taxes. Singapore has better infrastructure, better schools, better sewage system, better water supply, better government aids. And yeah the pride of Taiwan, healthcare... guess what? Most Singaporeans don’t pay for medicals either, mostly covered by their companies and their pension funds. The list just goes on the on, so please stop 自我安慰, life does not get easier because things are cheaper if you can't save and invest.
Also, wage gap is also lower in Taiwan. Taiwan is actually more livable than US. Just look at Bay Area, the amount of homeless is insane or Hong Kong, even South Korea.
Obviously Singapore is an exception.
@@stanley19430
No it IS not
@@aghileshemdani3144 it’s literally a fact. Search for wealth distribution and income inequality by countries.
This problem of increasing productivity but stagnant wages is a problem in the US too, I wonder what all these countries have in common
One of the reasons for the stagnation of pay for the Taiwanese, especially its graduates, was due to the indiscriminate production of university graduates.
Over the years Taiwanese universities expanded to number more than a hundred with plenty of poorly qualified students graduating. This was done in order to be more equitable for the population to aspire to be university graduates, hence, tremendously lowered their standards.
As too many poorly qualified graduates chasing for dwindling jobs there was hardly any prospect for increasing remuneration.
Yes too many univeristy educated people who want a while collar job.
Part of issue is currency conversion. Policy of E Asian countries is to have currency rates that give them export advantage (see mpettis.com).
From 1950 to 2000 Taiwan had role similar to China, making low then higher tech products are lower cost. I remember ~1992 you could buy a very good bicycle part (allow stem for handlebars) for half what you'd pay for Italian one. Taiwan took over the low-cost tool market. Then China came in and took this whole market.
As a descendant of Chinese immigrants, always looked at Taiwan for a possible plan B. Thanks for giving more information on this country
Look out for China if you are gonna move there. Also really bad air quality.
@@internetfreeforever2046 thanks, but my great grandparents moved away from there. Probably I should follow their move and not move back :)
@@internetfreeforever2046 Taiwan isn't China btw.
@@VVV-DL Been to China for a year. TW is better but just check aq index sites. It is still shit. I always run with respro when in Taipei. Well it is your choice what you do with your health. a lot of TW dont' give a damn about health, just saying.
@@VVV-DL oh I meant China could make a move on TW with force. There is always a possiblity
This is the same problem in the US. Almost no olds have a clue about anything useful (tech), but they're paid way more than youngs.
Another huge influence is that the datas are inaccurate. A lot of Taiwanese workers, especially those working in small business and company, don’t report their real income to avoid tax and business owners would also report lower salaries to avoid tax as well. They also get paid through physical cash without bank transfer record. So a lot of the statistics on income and salary are extremely under rated.
With jobs paying in cash; wouldn't those jobs be even more underpaid anyways?
Good point. This needs to be taken into consideration too.
@@MMLL369 not necessary, at least not in Taiwan. Also, a lot of company choose to separate worker salary into two parts, one is through bank transfer (this one is usually the minimum wage) and the other through cash( this one is not recorded by the government or any official stats). That’s why so many workers are labeled as being paid only at minimum wages or only a bit higher. But in fact a lot of them have a second form of salary that is not being recorded.
@@sunrisesu5548 Thanks for the explanation. So as long as one doesn't require profile building for mortgages, there could be invisible high earners behind the curtains LoL
Bingo
Very interesting point buddy brought up at the end, re Hong Kong, where people have given up on their economic prospects and start focusing on social issues. Europe had the same problems in the 1840s-50s.
There was widespread wage stagnation and un/under-employment It ended up in several wars, revolutions, and repression. Not a good period, and I fear we might be headed for a repeat. Just goes to show that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
46,786 NTD. So low wages compared to what? What’s the equivalent in dollars? Compare that to the USA standard of living to see if the wages are low.
thats about 1,650 USD in 2021
It’s not really about bad labor productivity. It is just more profitable to grow your money with financial instruments than to invest it for actual physical labor. It is a global phenomenon and has been like this for half a century now
I would like to point out that how difficult to earn a college (any college) degree back say 30 years ago. You mentioned that "almost everyone has college degree now." This makes value of college degree much less now. I talked to few Taiwan University students before, and I am not impressed. Hired few college students and they lack grit. They all want to get into TSMC or some highflying tech companies, but ...
Minimum salary NT$23,100 which is about $800. Average salary abut double that. I don't call it low. Prices were not cheap, but not that crazy expensive.
Because the currency exchange is artificially making Taiwanese salary low based on US dollar.
Taiwan’s salaries in objectively lower than Mainland’s coastal cities. For the same job there is always some place that just pays more in Mainland regardless the overall average. Taiwan losing its valuable humans resources to Mainland Chinese firms is a fact.
@@nehcooahnait7827 Just not true (unless you count HK/Macau). The average income is higher in Taiwan even compared with ShenZhen, Shanghai etc. And now because of the virus many people who worked in China before moved back to Taiwan (including me).
@@naguoning He was not talking about "the overall average income". In fact it is true that many traditional well-paid jobs (like financial, high-tech and educational sectors) have higher salaries in Shenzhen than in Taipei.
Despite salary in Taiwan was low. Many Filipinos rushed to work there
Nice research. In my opinion, the main reason to cause wage stagnation is Taiwan's companies have huge investment to China in 90's, that turned out the lower opportunities and the wages in Taiwan and a high economic development in China. The china set many traps to attract Taiwan's entrepreneurs. Taiwan's labor are hard workers and have high productivity. But rare opportunity cause higher competition and lower wages. This circumstance is going to change due to the migration of Taiwanese companies in China.Hopefully, it can change the wage stagnation situation in the near future.
I wouldn’t say those were traps lol. Taiwan entrepreneurs are having fun exploiting Mainland Chinese workers while making a shit load of money. As self-interested individuals in a market economy, they gave absolutely no shit over the well-beings of their workers or the fact that Taiwan’s working class had to accept lower wages to even get a job. TW’s government has always been very conservative over labor protections cuz it sounds scarily ‘socialistic’.
Every ambitious capitalists will choose super huge market than tiny one.
Salary for engineers are quite high. combined with a low cost of living, the actual earning could be higher than neighboring cities like Hong Kong (at least for engineers)
How much on average? Any figures?
I read somewhere, "Government topples when young educated workers can't find jobs."
@Tdan Kendros Only a small handful of lucky ones could leave the country.
The job prospect are good in taiwan lmao
It’s fine. They can blame everything on China.
I would like to hear more about this!
In many countries in Europe (south europe/east) is happening the same I guess.
I might be exaggerating but I think that has use to see general trends. Taiwanese labour has been utterly defeated post 90’s with capital flight to the mainland so these days unless you’re in design and manufacturing of IC’s you’re more or less considered surplus population that capital is unwilling to pay for the labour reproduction, hence the low birth rate. Taiwanese with its anti communism history unfortunately don’t seem to understand there is a class war, which wasn’t always the case, 375 rent reduction happened at a time when Taiwanese was no way as productive and educated as today, making some of the points in this video rather ahistorical. For those who don’t know tw government fixed land rent for farmers at 37.5% of their annual income, those that were above it needed to be reduced and those below it cannot be increased to it, in 1951, three years after their defeat by the ccp. That’s may be like asking Taiwanese billionaires today to give up a significant percentage of their annual income. It’s impossible to imagine it today. And makes you wonder may be that’d to do w Mao executing landlords across the straight.
I fully agree with your analysis especially with the part about capital flowing out of Taiwan into China. Factories that had mastered production would have focused on the tertiary sector of the economy - and very importantly adding more value to the products they manufacture. However when they moved production over to China the value of what they manufactured didn't increase as this wasn't necessary. Being cheap a good enough incentive for people to buy them.
@@jujuria13 exactly, now that China wage is rising, those companies just move to Vietnam. Searching for the lowest wage.
Very well put observations.
I'll just leave my thought here:
When I first came back to Taiwan back in 2003, minimum wage was 65nt per hour and it had not changed for over 10 years. Not only that but almost every jobs out there advertised that hourly rate and did not deviate from that by even 1nt. Essentially every single jobs paid 65 per hour unless it was say graveyard shift at a convenience store, then it might go up a little more.
It actually wasn't until president Ma Ying Jiou that they went and raised it all the way to 90 per hour, and employers fought HARD against the increase.
Since President Tsai things have actually gotten better, with wages going to something like 160 per hour back in 2019 and now it's 176 per hour, however most jobs are advertising higher, like 180-200 per hour even.
Yet despite that prices for stuff has only gone up modestly though most Taiwanese thinks "everything goes up in price except for wage". If only they seen how bad things got in the states... like massive inflation yet minimum wage stayed at $7.25 per hour, with McDonalds paying about 8 dollars per hour. When I worked at Walmart I started at 9 per hour, and went up close to 11 per hour later on. In that same time period price of everything has only gone up, and keep in mind in the US you have to have a car, even in the city and you can imagine you can't even live on 15 per hour.
In Taipei you do not need a car. Healthcare is cheap (in America it's not), MRT prices have actually gone down because they started offering the 1280nt monthly passes (they did not exist back in 2005 when I started working, and you can easily blow over 3000 per month just taking the MRT).
I'd say things have gotten better. I'm hearing about work shortages in Taiwan, even service jobs like 7-11 is becoming short based on the number of help wanted sign I keep seeing. But I still hate working for a Taiwanese boss...
Your analysis in incorrect because you cite Taipei, I could just as easily cite New York City where not even the rich drive as an example. And the workers shortage is not unique to Taiwan but all of east Asia because of the low birth rates and how cost of living. 7/11 in Japan and South Korea have also been struggling to hire. Taiwan and China later on have long since offshored super cheap manufacturing to SE Asia.
I really would love me you to go wider and deeper on this point. A video that is 30-90 minutes or more likely the series that also touches on USA, EU and China. This is great stuff, especially analysis of marginal hour pay.
from what I understand, lots Taiwan companies make the real pay on bonuses. Like the average salaries are low, even for high tech jobs. The bonuses however, goes as high as over 100k USD a year pending on ur position and what u do in the company. Not quite sure what company u r working for, however most Taiwan companies pay employees that way. Like the bonuses are extra commissions pending on company earnings. There r a lot people I know that work in the tech field in Taiwan, has salaries of only $20-30k usd max, but with yearly bonus top 100k
One way Taiwan can get rid of older workers is by offering them early retirement packages. My company does it all the time! I work in banking and one of our high net worth clients used to be an executive at our bank and he is a cheapskate but he took an early retirement when the company offered him the package which was strategic because they were able to replace him with a younger and cheaper employee!
I love Taiwan, but I also feel with salaries being low in the coming future. It will drive away, the most educated people in Taiwan to search for better opportunities elsewhere. This could affect the country in the long term future. The country needs to keep its educated nationals as well as attract more educated foreigners with the salary it offers. Your thoughts
Officials know that salaries are low. But macro policy is hard. Even right now I struggle to come up with ideas. It’s not as simple as mandating minimum wage raises. Low wages are also because Taiwan companies need to get more profitable so to be able to pay more. It is a problem for almost every region in the world.
Low wages is a double edged sword (although, I also personally prefer if Taiwanese wages increase). If the Taiwanese government can encourage entrepreneurship, maybe through incubators, to tap into low cost skilled labor, we might get a win-win.
The government has started a new policy of golden visas for foreign talents .... and if u are a foreigner recruited from abroad you will have a great salary +++. But let let say u are a foreigner who , naively , thought to enroll in one MBA program in Taipei and than u go out to look for a job .... you will be considered a local , therefore regular low salary ..... there is a congenital attitude of the Taiwanese to appreciate what comes from abroad ( foreign and mostly white ) and much less what is local talent !
hong kong is financialized. think about this: why would some liverpool worker be compensated for a profitable ipo in london?
You are a wonderful Social Scientist, I really respect your views and ideas, and I am a fan of your research!
Literally lower than China
Ok. ,here's my list of why on macro level, and if the corporations/government can address these then there might be a fix:
1) Taiwanese dollars are undervalued for the purpose of boosting exports, while this policy can be effective on numerical level, it undermines what makes a country competitive, that is make good products, and it affects negatively on real salary in Taiwan.
2) Taiwanese top companies are too "capitals intensive", for example like TSMC, they need to put their profits back into the companies compared to western counterparts. They are basically in the market for "race to zero" to see who can product the most quantities with lowest price/high quality. This is because in Taiwan, hardware companies still dominate over software companies. There's relatively low "soft power" for Taiwan's companies in terms of their marketing and research development.
3) Taiwanese resident taxes are too high and they focus on the wrong productivity. In countries such as Taiwan, to attract foreign investment should be the No.1 goal. You should have very low capital gain tax and even 0, like Singapore and Hong Kong, and very low corporate taxes for foreign companies. You should reduce significant regulations when it comes to non-China investment. The taxes should be levied heavily on properties. The government should take very drastic steps towards discouraging property investments.
4) Taiwan import taxes are too high. If we reduce import taxes by a large amount, the real salary will increase. They should start getting rid of the 100% automobile import taxes.
5) Taiwan should get rid of half of their "universities". And have more technical schools and also post-grad learning.
6) Taiwan should spend a lot more on the military. Yes, contrary to public belief, spending on military can boost economy significantly, it is basically what killed the Great Depression. And Taiwan needs it. In Taiwan, most government expenditures can be moved to this category instead of spending on useless subjects.
7) Transparency. Even the government is working on it, it is still not enough: The workers should get more transparency and have more freedom to quit the companies fast if they think they are underpaid. They need to list the salaries for all sectors and make workers aware of their values in the economy.
There are more, but I will rest my case for now
They need to get more tourism from Australia, US and the UK...... Expats etc..
The biggest reason is "Currency Undervalued" that is controlled by Taiwan Government.
Almost 2 million Taiwanese are working in Mainland China nowadays.
Excellent analysis. I only worked in Taiwan for 2 years teaching English.
Despite low salary, many migrant workers from Indonesia's rural area go to Taiwan looking for menial jobs.