Taiwan’s young people aged 25–35 are undergoing a survival experiment with no declared start. The median salary has stalled at NT$38,000, while a studio apartment in Taipei starts at NT$14,000. One full-time job is no longer enough, so after work they open delivery apps, rush to take on freelance projects on weekends, and edit videos late at night. This is not a “slash trend”; it is a survival strategy forced by structural困境 (dilemmas).
Xiao Jie, 28, graduated from the English Department of a private university. During the day, she works as a social media editor at a mid-sized marketing firm for a monthly salary of NT$33,000. Every evening at 6 p.m., after getting off work, she switches identities on her motorbike: she opens the Uber Eats app and delivers food until 10 p.m. On weekends, she takes on translation jobs on the 104 Freelance platform, charging NT$2,500 for a 3,000-word Chinese-to-English draft. With three jobs combined, her monthly income is approximately NT$52,000. After deducting the rent for an 8-ping studio in Songshan District, Taipei (NT$13,500), motorbike fuel costs, food expenses, and student loan repayments, she can save less than NT$8,000 each month.
“I’m not lazy; one salary simply isn’t enough to live on,” she says.
This is a microcosm of Taiwan’s slash generation. It is not the glamorous “multi-career” narrative seen on LinkedIn, but a survival formula pieced together by young people squeezed between structurally stagnant wages and soaring housing prices.
The Numbers Speak: Wages Can’t Keep Up with Rent
First, look at wages. According to the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) 2025 statistics, the median regular salary for all employed persons is NT$38,319. Note that this is the “median”—meaning half of the workforce earns less than this amount in actual take-home pay. The average starting salary for fresh university graduates is approximately NT$34,000; for non-STEM majors, it is extremely common to fall in the NT$28,000 to NT$32,000 range.
Next, look at rent. The average monthly rent for an independent studio apartment in Taipei is NT$14,400; even retreating to New Taipei City, it is NT$13,100. According to the internationally accepted guideline that rent should not exceed 30% of income, to rent a studio apartment in Taipei healthily, one needs a monthly salary of at least NT$43,000. But for someone with a starting salary of NT$34,000, rent alone consumes 42% of their income.
This is just for renting. If we talk about buying a house, Taipei’s housing price-to-income ratio reached 16.36 times by the end of 2024. This means a family must save all their income without eating or drinking for more than 16 years to afford a house. This figure exceeds London, New York, and Toronto, ranking among the highest in the world’s major cities.
How much can a master’s degree improve this? The average starting salary for fresh master’s graduates is between NT$38,000 and NT$42,000 (excluding the tech industry). It’s a few thousand more than a bachelor’s, but Taipei studio rents do not discount based on your degree. A liberal arts master’s starting salary in Taipei might barely break even with the rent for a studio apartment plus basic living expenses. The salary gap gained from two extra years of study is almost swallowed by rent.
Food Delivery Platforms: A Safety Net for a Generation
The number of food delivery riders in Taiwan surged from 45,000 in 2019 to 145,000 in 2022 — a threefold increase in just three years.
Who are these 145,000 people? According to 104 Job Bank's analysis of 8,402 resumes with food delivery experience, 42.9% of delivery riders started their work before the age of 24, with a large portion being university students and young people under 29. The median monthly income was NT$36,000, and the median work experience was 0.9 years — meaning most people left the job within a year.
Food delivery is not a career endpoint, but a transition. It serves as a safety net when regular salaries are insufficient, and as a cushion when ideal jobs are hard to find after graduation.
On January 2026, the Legislative Yuan passed the Rider Rights Protection and Food Delivery Platform Management Act in a third reading, mandating that the base compensation per order must not be less than NT$45, and the hourly wage must not be less than 1.25 times the minimum wage; it officially took effect at midnight on July 21, 2026 (see [[Special Law for Food Delivery]). This was a long-overdue institutional patch. Before this, food delivery riders had long existed in a gray area under labor laws — not considered formal employment, without labor insurance, health insurance, occupational injury protection, or a minimum wage. Platforms could unilaterally reduce per-order rates, and riders had no bargaining power.
While having laws to regulate this sector is undeniably a step forward, it also indirectly highlights a troubling fact: a livelihood for hundreds of thousands of people took nearly seven years to receive basic legal protection.
Not Just Delivery: A Spectrum of Side Hustles
Delivery is just the easiest entry point. Taiwan youth’s side-hustle spectrum is far wider than imagined.
Freelance Design and Engineering. 104 Freelance, Tasker, or even taking jobs directly on social media. A young person skilled in UI design earns NT$38K during the day and takes on freelance projects at night, charging NT$15,000 to NT$30,000 for a Landing Page. Programmers fare better: a React frontend project can be quoted at over NT$50,000. The benefit of freelancing is high hourly wages; the downside is unstable project sources. “Fat month this, dirt month next” is the norm.
Online Teaching and Knowledge Monetization. Hahow has accumulated over 1,000 online courses, with 800,000 platform members. PressPlay Academy has over 500 creators. A hit course can bring in millions or even tens of millions in revenue, but that is the tip of the pyramid. Most course creators’ income is far from this level, yet the time cost of creating courses is high: filming, editing, marketing, often taking three to six months.
Social Media Management. YouTube, Instagram, Threads, Podcasts. The lowest barrier to entry, but also the most uncertain ceiling. For Taiwan YouTubers to achieve stable advertising income, the follower count usually needs to break 100,000. Until then, social media management is more like a “side hustle that subsidizes time.”
Purchasing Agents and E-commerce. Japanese and Korean purchasing agents, Shopee sellers. Thin profits but fast cash flow. Many young people start with purchasing agents and slowly carve out a path for small-scale e-commerce.
According to a 2025 survey by 104 Human Resources Bank, 39% of office workers have side hustles. Looking at it by generation is even more striking: the proportion of Z-generation (born after 1997) with side hustles is as high as 57%, and the millennial generation is also at 48%. A survey by yes123 Job Network is even more extreme: 93.2% of respondents expressed willingness to become slash workers.
The primary reason for wanting a side hustle? 78.8% said “increase income.” Not pursuing self-realization, but because money is not enough.
Freelancers in Convenience Stores
Taiwan has a sight rare in the world: rows of people working inside convenience stores.
There are over 13,000 convenience stores across Taiwan, almost every one with seating areas, free Wi-Fi, and outlets. A NT$45 Americano allows you to sit for the entire afternoon. For freelancers and slash workers without the budget to rent a co-working space, 7-ELEVEN and FamilyMart are the cheapest mobile offices.
Coffee shops are also key. Taiwan’s density of all-you-can-drink coffee shops is extremely high. The Cafe Nomad website lists hundreds of coffee shops suitable for work, marking Wi-Fi speed, number of outlets, and noise level. This fact alone illustrates the magnitude of demand: there is an entire demographic of people who need a cheap place to sit down and earn money with a laptop.
Taiwan ranked 12th in the 2024 Global Digital Nomad Report, first in Asia. Behind this ranking is not just foreign remote workers enjoying low prices in Taiwan. A significant part is the ecosystem sustained by Taiwan’s local freelancers and slash workers.
Gray Areas: Reality Lags Behind Law
Taiwan’s Labor Standards Act does not prohibit employees from having part-time jobs. The Ministry of Labor’s stance is: workers have the right to engage in other work outside normal working hours, and employers cannot punish employees for this.
Sounds progressive. But reality is more complex than legal text.
Many companies’ work rules or labor contracts hide “non-compete” or “exclusive employment” clauses, requiring employees not to engage in other paid work. Although the legal validity of such clauses is controversial—non-compete clauses require reasonable compensation and a limit of two years—most young employees do not understand this and dare not challenge the company. The result: they do side jobs but dare not let the company know.
Another gray area is taxation. Freelance income, delivery income, and e-commerce income theoretically must be declared for income tax. But a large volume of small transactions—a NT$3,000 design project, an extra NT$15,000 earned from delivery in a month—often fall below the radar of the declaration system. It is not deliberate tax evasion; the institutional design itself has not kept up with the speed of the gig economy.
The gap in labor protection is even larger. Taiwan’s non-standard employment population was 804,000 in 2024, accounting for 6.95% of total employment. This number looks low, but it only counts people whose “primary job” is non-standard. Those who have full-time jobs during the day and deliver food or take on freelance projects at night have their side-hustle identity completely absent from labor statistics. No labor insurance, no occupational injury protection, no pension contributions. If you get into a car accident while delivering, your full-time company’s labor insurance will not cover you, because it was not during the commute.
Structural Problems Cannot Be Solved by Individual Effort
A cruel fact is: Taiwan’s housing price-to-income ratio surged 77% from 2012 to 2023, while the median salary increased only 14% in the same period. This scissors gap cannot be closed by “taking on one more job.”
104’s survey shows that 57% of the Z-generation have side hustles. This figure is often packaged as “young people are so energetic” or “slash is the new trend.” But if you put it back in context—seeing that over half a generation feels one full-time job’s income is insufficient to support life—this is not a trend, it is a warning signal.
Taiwan’s AI industry has driven semiconductor exports; electronic and information product exports increased by 52% year-on-year in 2024. GDP figures look good, and per capita income ranks in the top tier in Asia. But the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics simultaneously pointed out that the proportion of employed persons earning below the average salary has reached a historical high of 69.77%. The fruits of economic growth are highly concentrated in specific industrial chains; most people get none.
Young people see this clearly. They do not complain; they open delivery apps. They do not wait for policy improvements; they take on freelance projects on weekends. They do not hope to buy houses; they calculate how to survive.
The story of the slash generation, at its root, is an arithmetic problem: when the growth rate of income always lags behind the cost of living, you either accept becoming poorer and poorer, or you turn yourself into several people.
Taiwan’s young people chose the latter. But this should not be celebrated. It should be treated as a problem to be solved.
References
- Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics: Median Salary and Distribution Statistics——2025 regular salary median NT$38,319
- 104 Human Resources Bank: 2025–2026 Taiwan Region Salary and Benefits Survey Report——39% of office workers have side hustles, Z-generation reaches 57%
- Ministry of the Interior Real Estate Information Platform: Housing Price-to-Income Ratio Statistics——Taipei housing price-to-income ratio 16.36 times
- Ministry of Labor Occupational Safety and Health Administration: Delivery Worker Statistics——145,000 delivery workers nationwide in 2022
- Bnext: 2026 Delivery Special Law Mandates Minimum NT$45 per Order——Legislative Yuan passes Food Delivery Worker Rights Protection Law in third reading
- 591 News: Renters Suffer, Nationwide Rent Average Starts at NT$6,000——Taipei independent studio average monthly rent NT$14,400
- The News Lens International: Taiwan's Housing Crisis — Housing Prices Among the Highest Globally——International comparison of Taiwan’s housing prices and wages
- Taipei Times: The housing crisis is still pricing out young people (2025)——English report on Taipei youth’s housing purchase difficulties
- Ketagalan Media: Taiwan Needs to Raise Wages Faster to Protect Its Democracy (2025)——Impact of wage stagnation on Taiwan’s democracy
- Merit Times: 2024 Non-Standard Employment Proportion Hits 10-Year Low, Part-Time Workers Hit Record High——DGBAS non-standard employment statistics
Further Reading
- Delivery Workers Special Act — What That "Belated Institutional Patch" Has Become: How the 45 New Taiwan Dollar Floor Lands on Real People, and Two Questions It Doesn't Answer