🇹🇼 How can Taiwan Attract International Talent?
How Can Labor-starved Taiwan Attract More Foreign Talent?
The Taiwan Employment Gold Card has attracted over 10,000 foreign individuals to Taiwan. The government is planning to follow this up with a "Global Elite Card" that will give highly skilled foreign workers benefits closer to the level of Taiwanese citizens. Unfortunately, this will do little to plug the labor gap experienced by Taiwan's small- and medium-sized enterprises.
The global race for talent is in a dead heat, and Taiwan can't afford to sit this one out.
In the wake of the success of Taiwan's Employment Gold Card, the National Development Council (NDC) announced in September that it was making an amendment to the Act for the Recruitment and Employment of Foreign Professionals and launching a new "Global Elite Card" (全球菁英卡).
If the bill passes into law, after just a year of working in Taiwan, foreign professionals making an annual salary of over NT$6 million can apply for permanent residency, work permits for spouses, unrestricted stays for dependents, and access to disability and long-term care services.
The amended Act will also provide personal work permits for graduates from global top 100 universities and overseas students in Taiwan, allowing them a year to seek employment.
Hsieh Chia-yi (謝佳宜), director of the NDC's department of human resources development, explains that Taiwan's dual issues of an aging population and labor shortage have prompted Taiwan to take a page out of the playbooks of Singapore, Japan, and Korea. Through the two primary approaches of recruiting global talent and establishing a sophisticated ecosystem for retaining talent, the goal is to draw in 120,000 foreign professionals by 2028.
This figure comes from a survey coordinated by the NDC and conducted with the aid of multiple government agencies. Results showed that between 2024 and 2026, industries like smart machinery, IC design, and artificial intelligence will create an average of 35,000 new job openings every year. "It is clear that our country has an urgent need for highly skilled workers," says Hsieh.
The NDC launched Taiwan's Employment Gold Card in 2018. The card allows foreign professionals who meet certain qualifications, such as having a monthly salary of over NT$160,000, to freely seek and gain employment in Taiwan.
By the end of September of 2024, around 11,000 Employment Gold Cards had been handed out, with the highest percentage of cardholders—46%—being in the financial sector. Number two is the tech sector. The number one country of origin is the United States, with nearly 3,000 cardholders being Americans.
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Services Division at National Sun Yat-sen University
6dYears of neglect in nurturing and retaining top talent have led to severe attrition, resource gaps, and weakened
Multilingual, seasoned, and creative IT Expert, Project & Product Manager
1wCurious to know how many skilled and diligent foreigners have been already in Taiwan seeking employment?