Labor Market Summary
According to the report presented by the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting & Statistics, Executive Yuan, driven by the steady recovery of the global economy, continued demand for innovative technology applications, digital transformation, and rising product prices, Taiwan’s real gross domestic product (GDP) in 2021 Q4 grew by 4.86% on a year-on-year base. For the whole of 2021, the economic growth rate was 6.45%. As constantly emerging new technological applications such as 5G, automotive electronics, high-performance computing and IoT drive the demand for chips, the real GDP is projected to grow by 4.42% in 2022.
On the domestic demand side, private consumption has turned positively to a growth of 5.25% in 2021 Q4, mainly reflecting the restoration of retail sales, food service, and the continuous growth of e-commerce due to restrictions easing and government stimulus packages. The food and beverage segment has emerged for recession since last October, with an annual increase of 4.22% in 2021 Q4. In contrast, the consumption of leisure and entertainment-related services is still weak, and the number of passengers carried by public transportation has decreased by more than 10%.
Net increase or decrease in manpower demand at the end of April 2022 compared to the end of January: according to industry demand
Source: The first survey of manpower needs by the Ministry of Labor in 2022
According to data released by the Ministry of Labor, as the prospects of steady recovery of the global economy improve, it is estimated that between the end of January 2022 and the end of April 2022, manpower demand will increase by 75,000 persons. The increase of manpower demand has hit its highest since same quarter since 2012. Industries with the highest manpower demand are still predominately in manufacturing, with a net increase in demand of 43,000 persons, mainly from the electronic components manufacturing, equipment and metal product manufacturing industries. The main reasons for the increase in demand are the expansion or diversification of operations (59.8%) and the replacement of retirees (28.4%).
Reasons for the increase in manpower at the end of April 2022 compared to the end of January
Source: The First survey of manpower needs by the Ministry of Labor in 2022
Compared with the previous year, the unemployment rate declined by 0.05 percentage points in January 2022, and the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate remained the same to 3.70%. The average salary for the month was NT$46,743, which increased by 2.92% more than the same month last year. The number of unemployed persons was 430,000 in January 2022, of which the highest unemployment rate was within the 20-24 age bracket, accounting for 12.10%. The main reasons are that people in this bracket are in the initial job search stage and adapting to the workplace.
Remote working has been fast adopted by the software industry sectors, but not new norm for all industry sectors.
With the easing of the epidemic prevention measures in a gradual and orderly manner, and the increasing third dose vaccination rate in many countries, our life and work patterns have been settled into a new norm and begun to resume. However, the remote work style formed during the epidemic has given an opportunity for people to consider their work-life balance, which also led to the different working styles, such as hybrid work, remote work, and flexible working hours, becoming part of the enterprises’ benefits to attract talents and job seekers.
At present, the software companies and start-ups are highly adaptable and quick to introduce full remote or hybrid work styles, while the traditional industries still need some time to adopt this approach. This new working models also drive the digital transformation of enterprises. Enterprises need to actively organize a cloud-based collaborative team and effective employees’ performance evaluation to enhance their competitiveness.
Talent shortage prompts companies to provide more competitive salary and benefits, while job seekers need to cultivate a global vision and work flexibility
As the semiconductor companies announced their expansion plans and the service sector recovered recently, a job boom and urgent demand for skilled talent is happening in every industry. In order to recruit the top talent, companies need to enhance corporate branding, provide more competitive salary and benefits, and create a friendly working environment for employees’ development. For example, during the company's recruitment activities, the CEO or senior executives can introduce the company and interview the talent in person, presenting the company's ambition to actively recruit the talent.
In order to improve recruitment of the new generation of job seekers, companies need to break through traditional thinking, understand the new generation’s ideas about career and life, and keep pace with the times to improve employees’ benefits, salary policies and management, so as to avoid management issues caused by the generation gaps. Similarly, when recruiting contractors or temporary manpower, companies also need to provide a more competitive salary level to find suitable talents. In addition, through the company’s training program, the contractors who perform well can have the opportunities to be given permanent positions, creating a win-win situation for enterprises and talent.
In response to the rapid environment changes, the emerging trends of remote working, and more international talent flows, it is necessary for job seekers to strengthen professional functions, cultivate a global view, and have working flexibility experiences in different places. To have the capabilities of self-management and soft power such as communication and collaboration skills can also enhance personal competitiveness.
Industry Outlook
Finance and Banking
Due to a large number of the foreign finance and banking companies deferred granting bonus from March to May this year, it can be foreseen that more job openings will be released in Q2. Under the trends of shared financial and accounting services models, the vacancies in Taiwan will mainly be mid- and high-level career opportunities. In Q1, the manpower demand of Taiwanese financial enterprises was stronger than that of last year, and the demand for talent in accounting and business analysis was growing slightly. Last year (2021) a new decree for banking industry authorized five companies to undertake franchise businesses, which is expected to trigger demand for high-level positions.
Administration and human resource management:
Affected by the pandemic, many companies have undergone organizational changes and introduced hybrid working models, prompting human resources personnel to consider the possibilities of implementing hybrid workstyles for different positions and revaluating the required office space. The demand for HRBP (HR Business Partners), understanding business management and operations, also increased in this quarter (Q1 2022).
Having the remote work experience, the younger generations may require more benefits like flexible working hours. HR personnel must deal with every generations’ expectations of workstyles and assist the management to conduct a performance review while engaged in remote work. HR may utilize online training or workshops, designed for the management, to help managers effectively manage remote team members.
Legal and Compliance:
The overall demand for legal and compliance talents is still high and increasing significantly in the e-commerce (e-payment and e-tickets), FinTech, and blockchain sectors. In addition, due to many enterprises moving towards digital transformation, the demand for those talents, who are familiar with technology regulations, international financial transactions, personal information protection, and overseas legal research, is increasing.
Job seekers may find that the market for enterprises’ legal talent is becoming more competitive. Many students studying abroad are moving back to Taiwan to seek employment after completing their LLM (Master of Laws abroad). Moreover, those candidates, currently acting as middle and high-level legal supervisors in overseas companies, are considering returning to Taiwan as well.
In terms of working style, legal and compliance talent prefer flexible working hours and may choose to perform work as a contractor or self-employment. Some companies also offer a hybrid WFH model after the epidemic.
Sales and Marketing:
Companies continue to recruit sales and marketing talent, such as marketing, digital marketing, customer relationship management, and business channel management personnel. We can foresee that the number of job openings offered by the foreign companies will increase significantly in Q2 (2022) while no significant changes in the Taiwanese companies are expected.
As overall e-commerce consumption in Taiwan continues to grow, companies located in northern, central or southern Taiwan, will generally recruit more talent in website operations, digital marketing, and data analysis. Since e-commerce-related talent are mostly in northern Taiwan, those companies in the central and southern Taiwan, which plan to expand e-commerce business, also provide the benefits of expatriate subsidies and remote working, or directly set up business and marketing offices in northern Taiwan to attract talent.
In the coming quarter, since several Asia-Pacific unicorns with valuation at more than $100 million are likely to enter the Taiwan market, the overall market prospects are prosperous. E-commerce, customer relationship management, digital marketing and integrated marketing talent are more favored.
Retail:
With the easing of the epidemic, the manpower needs of the retail industry sector have gradually emerged, and many vacancies exist for front-line staff as well as counter waiters and waitresses. Before the epidemic, the main manpower supply was from students or fresh graduates. During the epidemic, job seekers may choose to continue their studies or pursue a second specialty through vocational training programs. Coupled with the tendency of job seekers to choose flexible working hours, there is a manpower shortage for retail sector.
At the same time, e-commerce, driven by the stay-at-home economy, has become part of the new norm. Even if the epidemic situation is stabilizing and epidemic measures are being eased, e-commerce will still accelerate growth of the retail industry in the future. Following the trend of the e-commerce boom, the physical retail sector is increasingly opting for digital transformation and expansion of online channels. That means existing financial, technical and other related supporting functional staff have changed their focus to launching or transitioning to new systems. Thus, currently retail urgently recruit financial and human resource contractors to support the company's daily operations.
From the perspective of the job market in northern, middle and southern Taiwan, although the new outlet opening in southern Taiwan has brought some manpower needs of store personnel, the overall demand for retail talents is still declining, and no significant change in northern and central Taiwan. Meanwhile, since the physical retail in central and southern Taiwan are expanding their online channels, they require many online marketing and local logistics staff to enhance online sales and provide fast delivery services. Thus, It is expected that the demand for e-commerce talents will continue.
Hospitality:
Due to the outbreak of COVID-19, the tourism and hospitality industry has been hit seriously and reshuffled in the past two years. During the epidemic, food and beverage businesses choose either to terminate their businesses or to embrace the take-out and delivery services to expand into new sources of revenue. As the epidemic eases, vacancies are gradually increasing in hospitality as well as food and beverage sectors in northern Taiwan, which shows that the demand for labor is resuming.
Furthermore, since the demand for manpower in the hospitality industry abruptly declined during the epidemic, the skilled talent transferred to other sectors and hardly any returned to hospitality industry. Therefore, the workforce shortage will continue.
Merchandising and Logistics:
Driven by the stay-at-home economy, the integrated online and offline consumption continues to grow, and logistics companies continue to expand their operation sites in Ruifang, Taoyuan and other cities. These companies actively recruit from entry-level positions for the terminal logistic to senior operations and order management managers.
Pharmaceuticals and Healthcare:
Foreign companies continue to focus on the headquarters’ strategies and have adopted cost reduction and organizational restructuring. Because they usually determine the company's next development direction before releasing vacancies, the recruitment demand is often not apparent. In addition, due to health insurance conditions and the current restrictions on physical sales visits, the development of foreign companies in the Taiwan market in Q2 (2022) may encounter some challenges.
On the other hand, Taiwanese companies have an optimistic outlook and the vacancies released previously have recently received investment in recruitment. In order to keep up with the rapid changes in the market, they are hiring R&D talent, business development, quality assurance specialist, quality control analysts, manufacturing specialists, etc.
Traditional production and manufacturing:
As the international demand for bicycles is increasing, bicycle manufacturers have already started to arrange production schedules for orders up until 2024, driven by increasing demand for related supplies such as parts and electric bicycle batteries. Thus, the bicycle-related manufacturing industry have called for talent in global logistics, order, inventory, and control management fields. Especially during epidemics, the importance of supply chain management has been highlighted, which boosted demand for production management talent. Coupled with the impact of the unstable international pandemic situation, the introduction of foreign workers into Taiwan is still restricted, resulting in a shortage of front-line production manpower.
Affected by the magnetic effect on a large number of manpower needs in the technology industry, the traditional industries, such as shoes manufacturers and construction industry, are having difficulties in recruiting talent for production and manufacturing personnel, civil engineering, and environmental safety. The wind power infrastructure construction has also been completed in the past two or three years, so that the current job openings have tended to be related to operation and maintenance engineering positions. The demand for home fitness equipment also grew during the epidemic. However, due to the slowdown of the international epidemic, the demand for home fitness equipment has subsequently decreased, which led to a reduction of manpower demand for related manufacturers.
Technology manufacturing:
As the leader in the Taiwan technology manufacturing industry, when TSMC announced its new chip fabrication plant setup plan in Taiwan, the expansion plans of the related manufacturing facility set up and integration solution providers were also started. The types of talent demanded for the technology manufacturing industry varies with the rapid establishment progress of semiconductor factories in several locations. From the beginning of the factory setup, most of job openings are released by the gas, equipment, and material suppliers. Then the vacancies will move to the process engineering personnel. We can foresee that considerable vacancies will continue to occur over the next three to five years.
Although the number of job openings offered by enterprises has increased significantly, factors such as low birthrates and the migration of manpower have made the issue of talent shortage even more pronounced. The younger generation of job seekers do not necessarily take up the vacancies of the industry's leading companies as their first choice, as many prefer to enter companies with a less-pressure working environment and better work-life balance. They may choose to work for foreign companies with better welfare conditions or chose to work abroad.
In order to seek and retain talent, enterprises provide flexible working hours, paid leave for new parents and other generous welfare systems benefits, and further expand their recruitment into the international market. They are willing to increase salaries to lure professionals in the IC design field.
Information Technology:
Due to the fact the cryptocurrency field has been suppressed in China, some companies look to Taiwan, Singapore, and other countries for talent. In order to attract ideal candidates, enterprises offer a generous compensation package and benefits including crypto salary, remote work etc. From the recruiters’ points of view, hiring software talent in Taiwan is more cost-effective than that in US and European countries, which leads to more foreign companies aggressively looking for the software talent in Taiwan. We can foresee that the manpower demand will continue to increase.
In addition, as more and more companies are adopting a hybrid work or full-remote working styles, new start-ups or enterprises developing remote-work-related software tools have also sprung up, driving the demand for related software manpower, including data scientists, algorithms engineers, automation test engineers, software development engineers, etc.
At present, most of the demand for software talents is in northern Taiwan. However, some companies are evaluating the possibility of setting up locations in central and southern Taiwan because they can offer a perfect way of remote working. Talent can have no concerns of career development if choosing to return to their hometown. Also, companies are interested in recruiting graduates from the National Cheng Kung University, the National Sun Yat-Sen University and other schools who may choose to stay in central and southern Taiwan for work. Some software companies in southern Taiwan intend to recruit more software talent from northern Taiwan by offering remote working opportunities.
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