31% of Taiwanese earn less than NT$30,000; 10% earn over NT$61,000 per month

Service economy doesn’t mean they should be reliant domestic demand
, unfortunately a big problem is the China market is not truly open to 'foreign companies ’ in this sector.
China is obviously the biggest Chinese speaking serviCe market.

Of course not 100%. However, domestic demand is more important than exports. Keeping wages low in mainly exporting manufacturing industries is good for the economy (thus so many SE Asian workers), paying a Taiwanese person 20k a month to work in a convenience store isn’t good for the economy. Good for the owner, yes.

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education has nothing to do with it. i applied for 60 jobs as soon as i graduated with my degree. just basic ass jobs. i just needed some money to live off. i didn’t get squat. eventually i got a job through a family member, but it should not be that difficult to get a basic job. and this was 10 years ago. things have only gotten worse. my experience with the job center was a nightmare too. absolute misery.

taiwanese don’t have this problem. they might not have high paying jobs but i would pick being able to get a job than not any day of the week thanks. and i would much rather be around low paid taiwanese workers than on the dole brits too. far more pleasant.

10 years ago was the financial crisis, very unfortunate timing. A lot of the time employers won’t employ grads in certain jobs if they think you will leave as soon as something better comes along.

However I got hired from the UK ten years ago within a few weeks of interviews. Its always tough for new grads.

Best approach someone can have, is to be fair to yourself and stop playing victim. Everyone deserve what they have.

I agree here with andrew, is easy to make money in taiwan. Is all about stepping out of average misserable life, meet some cool people, find a nitche. Get or learn a skill, and leverage it later.

Taiwan has shitload of money, people, families have money, no dept, low utilities cost,even taiwanese dinosaurs companies sitting on big hill of cash. On top of it, concentration of capital is unbelivable. West coast of taiwan is one the most populated area. You can reach like 10 mio of people within a hour of ride on your scooter for less than a 50 twd. Is crazy and folks do not forget, government is super relax. Low taxes, and low law enforcment. I mean if you not making money in this place, gotta be a problem with you, not with a market. Market is out there. Not mention they are small island next to large continent, market wit one billion people, which grows up like 7% yearly for last 30 years. They speak same language. We have nothing like this in Europe.

Yea sure, they totally deserved to be paid less than 30k. Bosses are cheap and on another hand people do no really create a lot of value for a companies. I blame their parents for it. Kids are totally spoiled/scared cause of parents. Living in shadow of parents, not gettin enough sun to open and shy by themself. They are not fully an adults.They can not take action

I know what am talking about, cause my wife is the same. I met her like 6 years ago, when we starting dating. Was like 21 back than, but i already try to have goals in life. I mean, i was on my own since 17. On another hand her mentality was like mentality of teenage girl. Said to her, babe i can marry you for papers, my country is super relax and in 4 years down the road you will have EU passport, and straight acess to biggest world labour market. For exchange i wanna taiwanese arc. And she was like oh, oh, my babi,babi he does not like foreigners. Well no need for him to find out, but my babi is smart, he will find out… I really do not know how i keep up with all this taiwanese crap, really. When i married her 5 years later, there was so much politcs involved on family level, one day i simple had to sit on airplane and go home. Could not breathe. Sent her text you come or not, up to you.

I remember my wife, friend, classmate. Both girls start working for the same taiwanese company, we were chilling at bar on friday, and this friend was sending her CV all around asia. What a determination. Yea she was from poor family and far from being pretty. She knew it, no rich engineer will ever marry her, and her babi will want more money every month down the road. She got a good job in korea, there she met her dutch boyfriend. Not a really handsome guy, but cool enough, with chill family. Nothing like this was for her in taiwan. She got residency in netherland based on their relation ( no marriage needed). And soon even better job at recognised dutch company, with life balance package. She makes over 100k twd now, and this is like after tax. And boyfriend having own apartment, no rent and no family politcs involved. She sold herself well.

Meanwhile my gf keeps her 40k taiwanese job, and being wit mummy, babi for most of weekends. Now she “can not find” a job in eu for a year or what, u know why… cause is hard to get a job in eu. Yea i agree, is harder to get a job in EU…so you gotta prepare yourself more and work on your strategy hard. But jobs here are way better than working for taiwanese boss… is all about how you market yourself, and what experience you build up.

Yea they totally earned 30k twd per month.

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As well as no taxes or controls, they alSo get generous subsidies and 補助 when they are struggling

Foreign companies are restricted fRom investing in Taiwan

well thats my point. why should it be so hard to get these monkey level jobs? even if you do get one you are not earning much either and are treated pretty poorly. if you can’t get one you get to join the chavs on the dole with no hope. sure its nice if you can find an ‘educated’ job as you put it. but if not the hassle to find a normal job is far beyond reasonable. here the jobs might not be well paid but at least you can get them. i find it preferable, kind of repeating myself now.

I also started my career from entry level grad jobs in Taiwan. That was easy enough but the problem was the pay scale was too low and went up too slowly. Now I have to save like crazy to make up for poor pay in previous years. Be careful what you wish for.

I don’t know man you seem to be blaming regular people for getting paid badly for a regular job in their own country.
More than half the world is like that .

Not everybody can run their own business or get paid America or European level wages. Ever see all those restaurants opening and then shutting down again six months later?

And just because there are millions of people crammed together doesn’t mean it’s easy to make money otherwise Bangladesh would be a swell place.

Your solution of just emigrating is not the best either.
On an individual level it works for some but if all the young people start emigrating the local economy will just get worse and people lose their family connections as well.

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well i don’t wish to do an entry level job(and those jobs are what they are) at this point in my life, and i dont need to luckily. i just wish it isn’t such a depressing rigmarole to get one in my home country. i think thats pretty reasonable.

I did it the way you describe. My friends were living it large within a few years in London and Dublin (they weren’t even British natives ). I wasn’t. But I’m stubborn.

Now I probably do better because of the low taxes but they had an easier working life. Helped that some were in IT but others were working for the city governments (even though they were foreigners), the city government won’t give permanent full time jobs with benefits to foreigners in Taiwan .
All of them were getting paid better for less hours at work and more holidays and benefits.

Less than $1000 per day for 31%.

Wonder what percentage is at the next reasonably measurable amount. I believe a huge percentage are not making a lot more.

50% make less than 37k per month basic. Its in one of the articles as the average (median?).

80% make less than 50k per month basic.

https://eng.dgbas.gov.tw/ct.asp?xItem=42033&ctNode=3339

We can see the very anemic wage growth rate over the last two years . Its much worse than I expected actually.
0.7 per cent and 1.6 per cent for this year (need to download the PDF).

EDIT that growth rate is full time workforce not wage growth, my bad !!

EDIT II checked again year on year earning growth for September only 1.35 per cent so even worse than the workforce growth rate lol!
For the Jan - Sep period year on year growth was 2 per cent.
These are all well below inflation rate so it means workers are getting poorer every year.

Most of these people have bachelor’s degree and a huge number have master’s degrees or even Ph.D. Odd imbalance but at least it’s not a bad place to live.

That’s not true at all. Many over 40 don’t have a bachelor’s degree let alone a master’s degree.

Besides, bachelor’s degree here is worthless. Actually a bachelor’s degree is worthless almost everywhere nowadays.

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Okay then, it’s partially true. But the younger generation it’s mostly true. Or not?

Want to have a laugh at government stats?

They claim our cost of living only went up 6 per cent since 6 years ago.

http://www.stat.gov.tw/public/data/dgbas03/bs3/enews/10610/CPI.ods

Housing 2 % more expensive than 2011?
Rent 5% more than 2011?
Vegetables went up 70% and but food in general just 20% , eggs got cheaper?
Electricity , gas and water cheaper?
Transportation , cheaper ?

Fecking liars😕

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The minimum wage in Seattle, OTOH, is the equivalent of 80,000 NT$ a month. Its economy supports such a wage for unskilled, inexperienced workers simply because it’s creating massive, high value intellectual wealth that lifts all boats.

“If you look at where cloud is happening – where the talent, innovation, and opportunity is – it is hard to deny that the worldwide center of gravity is here in Seattle,” . . . Not only are Microsoft and Amazon headquartered here, Google Cloud has located a large part of its engineering team here. “You can even look at VMware, in many ways also a key player, and trace the critical members of its leadership team, including its founder, back to Seattle,” . . . .

“The talent is simply here. If you believe that cloud is the next critical platform that will power the world – and I do – then the reality is that Seattle holds the ammunition.” . . .

The cloud industry is set for massive growth. Seattle once had a rep as a boom-and-bust town that might experience rapid growth but could also hit the economic skids quickly, for instance if Boeing had layoffs. Not anymore, because the cloud industry is headed nowhere but up.

“The spend on cloud is not going anywhere. Data management, storage and processing is a source of competitive advantage for frankly most companies, and enterprises are only going to accelerate their spend around these services and solutions as time goes on. Analysts see cloud and related software and services growing to over half a trillion dollars by 2020.”

Meanwhile Taiwan is poised to pick up the crumbs, at crumb wages, once the centers of innovation have created the next wave of intellectual wealth and are in need of low cost, low value suppliers.

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Idk about the gas, water, and electricity, but is the housing situation worse now in relations to in 2011? I don’t think so. Rent’s been the same for years and the housing went up then down a couple of years back.

I don’t recall the price public transportation being altered for the worse either.

Compares to America most countries have crumb wages. Some more crumbs than others, but everyone knows money is better in America. Average net wage in most countries in Western Europe is like 2000 euro according to official statistics. That’s not even 80,000 NT$.

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