Taiwan’s NT$3 trillion (US$107.9 billion) worth semiconductor industry has been actively recruiting talent this year. The demand for workers in the second quarter is rising more than 44 percent from a year earlier, reported website 104 Job Bank.
The Job Bank in its whitepaper on the semiconductor industry’s workforce said Taiwan-based semiconductor companies averaged 27,701 job openings per month in the April-June period. This has been the highest in the six and a half years and an increase of 44.4 percent compared to the second quarter of 2020. It was also the fourth consecutive quarter in which the figure rose.
104 Job Bank also said that while the global economy has been hurt by COVID-19, Taiwan’s semiconductor industry has benefitted from strong demand for emerging technologies, including AI, 5G applications and IoT, which continued to grow.
Also, stay-at-home economy including the rising popularity of online learning, and remote work, have also added to the rising demand of semiconductors, driving the need for more manpower, said 104 Job Bank.
Within the semiconductor industry, the IC manufacturing sector saw the monthly average of its job openings in the second quarter grow 55.3 percent from a year earlier, it said in the whitepaper.
It further said that this compares with 51.2 percent for the IC packaging and testing sector, and 40.8 percent for the IC design sector, while IC engineering accounted for about 55 percent of the job openings advertised in the semiconductor industry per month on average.
However, despite the growing demand, the average monthly salary in the semiconductor industry fell NT$195 (US$7), or 0.4 percent from a year earlier to NT$52,483 in the second quarter, the second highest.
The IC design segment offered an average monthly wage of NT$67,834 compared to NT$56,190 in the IC manufacturing segment. The IC packaging and testing segment noted an average monthly salary of NT$47,014.
The 104 Job Bank also stated that the average pay, including bonuses, in the local semiconductor industry was NT$1.7 million, lower than the NT$2 million to NT$3.5 million seen in the US, Singapore and Japan.
