Why Taiwan suddenly needs 400,000 foreign workers for critical sectors, including hi-tech
- Island looks to inject considerable talent into pillar industries in the face of a shrinking labour pool, few births and a population that keeps getting older
- Taiwan saw a 5 per cent decline in total foreigners from 2020 to 2021, and some say more could be done to make island expat-friendly
Taiwan will try to attract 400,000 mostly white-collar foreign workers over the next decade to support the island’s pillar industries, including hi-tech, as the domestic population gets smaller.
National Development Council head Kung Ming-hsin said at a forum in Taiwan on Tuesday that the island needed that many foreign workers to fill all of the jobs created by changing industry demands in the midst of a shrinking talent pool due to low birth rates and an ageing population.
“This sounds like the right direction,” said David Chang, secretary general of the Taipei-based non-profit organisation Crossroads, which arranges events for new arrivals to Taiwan.
“There is a talent shortage that’s growing in urgency,” he added. “This is even a question about national security and where our soldiers are going to come from if we have a shrinking population.”
A total of 792,401 foreigners held Taiwan residency permits as of late 2020, as many expats were lured by the island’s lack of a Covid-19 outbreak – an outlier in the world at that time. But as cases crept up, that total dropped by 5 per cent in 2021, to 752,900 foreigners, according to official figures.