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<\/p>\nIs the increase in freelance workers a sign of an economy in distress?<\/p>\n
By Michael Turton \/ Contributing reporter<\/p>\n
In recent years, wage stagnation in Taiwan, especially after inflation, has been driving workers to leave low-paying service jobs and shift to gig work. <\/p>\n
A 2023 TVBS report states: \u201cCheng Min-chih, a new freelancer, used to handle cases while maintaining her 9 to 5 job, boosting her regular monthly income of NT$24,000 to as much as NT$60,000.\u201d After such relatively rosy presentations, however, articles on gig work typically end with warnings for both the workers and society at large.<\/p>\n
The reasons for the boom in gig work is obvious: real wages in Taiwan have grown by an annual average of just around 1 percent over the past decade, according to a Straits Times report. It referenced a February 2025 survey by job portal Yes123 which \u201cfound that 60 percent of workers had not received a raise in three years, while 12 percent had gone for a decade without a salary adjustment.\u201d <\/p>\n
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Photo: Taipei Times File Photo<\/p>\n
Traditional manufacturing and service industries have been hit by competition from the People\u2019s Republic of China (PRC), and more recently, the tariffs placed on Taiwan by US President Donald Trump. Outside of the thriving chip industry, Taiwan\u2019s economy is slowly being eroded away. <\/p>\n
Moreover, during the last four decades the lion\u2019s share of the economy\u2019s returns have shifted from labor in the early 1990s to capital at present. The Straits Times observed that a 2024 report released by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) shows that Taiwan\u2019s household wealth gap has nearly quadrupled in 30 years, with the richest 20 percent of households holding 66.9 times more wealth than those in the bottom 20 percent in 2021. In 1991, that figure was just 16.8 times.<\/p>\n
According to DGBAS, Taiwan saw over 800,000 employed in non-traditional sectors in 2024. By comparison, Reuters reported this week that a Chinese think tank estimates the number of people in flexible employment reached \u201c320 million this year from 280 million last year, about 44 percent of China\u2019s workforce.\u201d Are rising gig worker numbers a sign of an economy in distress?<\/p>\n
REDUCED SUPPORT<\/p>\n
Researchers generally find that workers in Taiwan\u2019s part-time and gig economy can receive higher hourly pay, but they experience higher income volatility, along with reduced access to social welfare support such as retirement, labor insurance and worker\u2019s compensation for on-the-job injuries. This implies that decades hence they will retire into poverty, an issue the nation has yet to grapple with. The lack of social protection for delivery drivers, for example, \u201cforces riders to choose between autonomy and protection,\u201d as one researcher put it. <\/p>\n
Even the idea of \u201cautonomy\u201d is illusory in many gig jobs. A recent paper by a team headed by National Taiwan University\u2019s (NTU) Cheng Ya-wen (\u912d\u96c5\u6587) surveyed 487 location-based gig workers. It concludes: \u201calgorithmic management is associated with increased stress among platform workers as they try to meet the platform\u2019s performance metrics.\u201d An analogical stress is common among freelancers, who must often choose to forego a night out or a weekend trip or time with family because new work has come in. <\/p>\n
Another issue is a hidden gender division. An essay published this year by the UN Development Program calling for better governance of gig work across Asia observes that \u201cgender pay gaps are also present in many cases, with women concentrated in lower-paid care and microwork tasks, while men dominate higher-paid delivery and driving roles.\u201d <\/p>\n
STRUCTURAL PROBLEMS<\/p>\n
Taiwan.Md framed the problems faced by gig workers as structural, caused by stagnant wages banging against rising rents and living costs. The median wage is less than NT$40,000 and the starting wage is less than NT$35,000, but even a studio apartment in Taipei averages NT$ 14,000 (it is roughly NT$1000 lower in New Taipei City). That implies that a young worker just starting out is paying around 40 percent of their salary just for rent. Because a full-time job no longer covers expenses, after they get off formal work, young people deliver food or do freelance work on weekends. This is \u201ca survival strategy squeezed out by structural crisis,\u201d,Taiwan.Md says.<\/p>\n
Over half of young people, Taiwan.Md observes, have a side hustle, meaning that over half the young population believes it needs two jobs to survive. This is \u201ca warning signal\u201d of the economic reality experienced by the young.<\/p>\n
Not just the young. A flood of reports and commentaries contends that the elderly in Taiwan\u2019s super-aged society must either come back to work or stay on their jobs. Inflation and poverty are \u201cpush\u201d factors sending them back into the labor force, where they are greeted by labor shortages. A 104 Job Bank report observed recently that out of over 1 million job vacancies in Taiwan, 181,000 were aimed at middle-aged and elderly workers, a threefold rise in just three years. For many elderly, especially single females from the \u201cmiracle\u201d generation, retirement pensions won\u2019t even cover a studio apartment in Taipei. Gig work will be an inevitable choice for them.<\/p>\n
INFORMAL ECONOMY<\/p>\n
Discussions of the gig economy often fail to highlight the way it intersects the informal economy, the part of the economy that is neither monitored nor taxed by the government. In many discussions, Taiwan\u2019s informal economy is roughly 20 percent of the size of the formal economy. Workers in this economy are often unpaid family members of the senior family member, and the products they make are often transported by gig workers. Taiwan passed legislation in January aimed at protecting delivery workers, but such regulations should be extended across the entire informal and illegal economy.<\/p>\n
At present we do not regard illegal migrant workers (and foreign spouses) in Taiwan\u2019s farming and services sector as gig workers, though they often are. Even when they have \u201cstable\u201d employment they suffer from the same precarity. By subdividing the workforce into categories like \u201cgig,\u201d \u201cfreelance,\u201d \u201cdelivery,\u201d \u201cagricultural,\u201d \u201cillegal,\u201d and \u201cmigrant,\u201d the system uses divide-and-rule tactics to create floating labor forces that must accept the (abusive) conditions of their employment pigeon-holes. That is a public policy choice, not a natural law. <\/p>\n
Moreover, Taiwan is only hurting itself. If the young are gig workers struggling each week with three jobs and no free time, they cannot have children. Nor can they marry. This month the government reported that marriages fell 15 percent last year to just 104,000. Where marriages go, birth rates follow.<\/p>\n
Neither can gig workers start businesses of their own, limited as they are by time and cash pressures. In Taiwan small- and medium-sized business start-ups struggle, unless they are in the tech sector. Yet few gig workers have the skills to open a tech start-up. This suggests that while entry into the gig economy may be easy, exit from it may not be.<\/p>\n
Hence, for many young workers, unless government policies directly address their problems, the gig economy is going to become a lifestyle trap offering the illusion of autonomy for its workers while building little for their future, or the nation\u2019s.<\/p>\n
Notes from Central Taiwan is a column written by long-term resident Michael Turton, who provides incisive commentary informed by three decades of living in and writing about his adoptive country. The views expressed here are his own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Is the increase in freelance workers a sign of an economy in distress? By Michael Turton \/ Contributing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":539586,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[72,113,61,60,9889,9888],"class_list":["post-539585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-the-taipei-times","tag-9888"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=539585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539585\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/539586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}