Young people in Taiwan aged 25 to 35 are undergoing an unannounced experiment in survival. The median salary stagnates at NT$38,000, while the rent for a Taipei studio starts at NT$14,000. A single full-time job is insufficient, so after work, they open food delivery apps, take on weekend gigs, and edit videos late into the night. This is not a "side hustle trend"; it is a survival strategy forced by structural difficulties.
Xiao Jie, 28, graduated from an English department at a private university. During the day, she works as a social media editor for a mid-sized marketing company with a monthly salary of NT$33,000. Every evening at six o'clock after work, she switches identities: she rides her scooter to open the Uber Eats App and delivers until ten PM. On weekends, she takes translation projects on 104 Freelance platforms, charging NT$2,500 for a 3,000-word Chinese-to-English manuscript. The three jobs combined bring in about NT$52,000 per month. After deducting the rent of an eight-ping studio in Songshan District, Taipei (NT$13,500), gas money, food expenses, and student loan repayments, she can save less than NT$8,000 each month.
"It's not that I don't work hard; the salary just doesn't sustain life," she says.
This is a microcosm of Taiwan's gig generation. It is not the glossy narrative of "multiple careers" on LinkedIn, but the survival formula forged under the dual pressure of structural wage stagnation and soaring housing prices.
The Numbers Speak: Salaries Cannot Keep Up with Rent
First, look at salaries. According to statistics from the Executive Yuan's Budget Bureau in 2025, the median regular salary for all employed workers is NT$38,319. Note that this is the "median"—it means half of the laborers earn less than this amount per month. The average starting salary for a fresh graduate with a bachelor's degree is about NT$34,000; it is extremely common to fall in the range of NT$28,000 to NT$32,000 if they are not in STEM fields.
Next, look at rent. The average monthly rent for an independent studio apartment in Taipei City is NT$14,400, and even in New Taipei City, it is NT$13,100. According to the international standard of "rent should not exceed 30% of income," one needs a minimum salary of NT$43,000 to rent a studio apartment healthily in Taipei. However, someone starting with a bachelor's degree salary of NT$34,000 spends 42% of their income just on rent.
This is only renting. If talking about buying, the price-to-income ratio for housing in Taipei City reached 16.36 times at the end of 2024, meaning that a family, without eating or spending any income, would need over 16 years to afford one house. This figure ranks among the highest in major global cities, surpassing London, New York, and Toronto.
How much can a master's degree improve things? The average starting salary for fresh graduates with a master's degree is between NT$38,000 and NT$42,000 (excluding tech industries). This is several thousand more than a bachelor's degree, but the rent of a Taipei studio does not offer a discount based on your education. The starting salary of a humanities master in Taipei might just cover the rent for a studio plus basic living expenses. The wage gap gained from two extra years of study is almost entirely consumed by rent.
Food Delivery Platforms: A Safety Net for a Generation
The number of food delivery workers in Taiwan surged from 45,000 in 2019 to 145,000 in 2022. Tripled in three years.
Who are these 145,000 people? According to an analysis of 8,402 resumes with food delivery experience from 104 Job Bank, 42.9% of delivery workers started before the age of 24, largely consisting of university students and youth under 29 who were still studying. The median salary is NT$36,000, and the median tenure is only 0.9 years: meaning most people leave within a year.
Food delivery is not an endpoint career; it is a transition. It is a safety net when a full-time job's salary is insufficient, and a cushion when they cannot find an ideal job after graduation.
In January 2026, the Legislative Yuan passed the "Act to Guarantee the Rights of Food Delivery Workers and Manage Food Delivery Platforms," stipulating that the basic 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 came into effect at midnight on July 21 of the same year (see Delivery Platform Law). This is a belated institutional patch. Before this, delivery workers were long caught in the ambiguity of labor laws: not considered formal employment, lacking labor insurance or occupational accident protection, and no base salary. Platforms could unilaterally reduce prices, leaving delivery workers with no bargaining power.
While "having laws to regulate" is progress, it also illustrates something: a working model relied upon by tens of thousands of people took nearly seven years to receive basic legal protection.
More Than Just Delivery: The Variety of Side Jobs
Food delivery is just the easiest entry point. The spectrum of side jobs for Taiwanese youth is much wider than imagined.
Freelance Design and Engineering. Taking projects on 104 Freelance, Tasker assignments, or even directly through social media. A young person skilled in UI design might earn NT$15,000 to NT$30,000 by taking a project for a company while earning NT$38K during the day. The situation is better for software engineers: a React frontend project can be quoted over NT$50,000. The advantage of freelance work is high hourly wages; the disadvantage is unstable sources—"rich this month, scraping by next month" is common.
Online Teaching and Knowledge Monetization. Hahow School has accumulated over 1,000 online courses with 800,000 platform members. PressPlay Academy has over 500 creators. A viral course can bring in millions or even tens of millions, but that is the top of the pyramid. The income of most course creators is far below this scale, yet the time cost of production—filming, editing, marketing—often takes three to six months.
Self-Media Operation. YouTube, Instagram, Threads, Podcast. This has the lowest barrier to entry and the least certain ceiling. For Taiwanese YouTubers to achieve stable ad revenue, they usually need over 100,000 followers. Before that, self-media is more like "a side hustle that burns time."
Personal Shopping and E-commerce. Personal shopping for Japan and Korea, Shopee sellers. Profit margins are thin, but cash flow is fast. Many young people start with personal shopping and slowly carve out a small e-commerce path.
According to a 2025 survey by 104 Job Bank, 39% of office workers have side jobs. It is even more astonishing when looking at generations: the proportion of Gen Z (born after 1997) with side jobs reaches 57%, and Millennials also have 48%. A survey by yes123 Job Search was even more extreme: 93.2% indicated a willingness to become a gig worker.
The primary reason for wanting a side job? 78.8% said "to increase income." It is not the pursuit of self-actualization; it is that money is not enough.
The Freelancer in the Convenience Store
Taiwan has a rare sight globally: rows of people working inside a convenience store.
With over 13,000 convenience stores across Taiwan, almost every one has seating areas, free Wi-Fi, and power outlets. A NT$45 Americano is enough to sit there all afternoon. For freelancers and gig workers who cannot afford office space, 7-ELEVEN and FamilyMart are the cheapest mobile offices.
Coffee shops are also part of this trend. Taiwan has a high density of unlimited-time coffee shops; Cafe Nomad lists hundreds of suitable workplaces, noting Wi-Fi speed, number of outlets, and noise level. This phenomenon itself demonstrates the scale of demand: an entire demographic needs a cheap place to sit down and earn money on their laptop.
Taiwan ranked 12th globally in the 2024 Global Digital Nomad Report, ranking first in Asia. Behind this ranking is not solely foreign remote workers enjoying low prices. A large part of it is sustained by local Taiwanese freelancers and gig workers.
The Gray Area: Reality Outpacing Law
Taiwan's Labor Standards Act does not prohibit employees from having secondary jobs. The Ministry of Labor's stance is that laborers have the right to engage in other work outside normal working hours, and employers cannot discipline them for this reason.
This sounds open-minded. But reality is more complex than the law.
Many company regulations or labor contracts contain clauses such as "non-compete" or "exclusive employment terms," requiring employees not to engage in other paid work. Although the legal validity of these clauses is debated—a non-compete requires reasonable compensation and a maximum term of two years—most young employees do not understand this, nor dare they challenge their company. The result is: they have side jobs, but they dare not let the company know.
Another gray area is taxation. Income from projects, food delivery, or e-commerce should theoretically be reported as taxable income. However, a large amount of small transactions—a NT$3,000 design project, earning an extra NT$15,000 in one month through deliveries—often falls under the radar of the reporting system. It is not deliberate tax evasion; it is the system's design that has failed to keep pace with the speed of the gig economy.
The gap in labor protection is even larger. In 2024, Taiwan had 804,000 non-typical employed people, accounting for 6.95% of the total workforce. This number may not seem high, but it only counts those whose "main job" is non-typical. Those who have a full-time job during the day and do deliveries or take projects at night are completely outside labor statistics. They lack labor insurance, occupational accident protection, and retirement fund contributions. If they get into an accident while delivering, their main company's labor insurance will not cover them because it was not on the way to or from work.
Structural Problems Cannot Be Solved by Individual Effort
A cruel fact is that Taiwan's housing price-to-income ratio rose by 77% between 2012 and 2023, while the median salary only increased by 14% during the same period. This gap cannot be closed by "taking on another job."
A survey by 104 shows that 57% of Gen Z have side jobs. This figure is often packaged as "youth are ambitious" or "the gig economy is a new trend." But if you look at it in context—when over half of a generation feels that the income from one full-time job is insufficient to support life—this is not a trend; it is a warning sign.
Taiwan's AI industry has boosted semiconductor exports, with electronic information product exports increasing by 52% in 2024. GDP figures look good, and per capita income ranks among the top tier in Asia. However, the Budget Bureau also pointed out that the proportion of employed people earning below the average salary reached a historical high of 69.77%. The fruits of economic growth are highly concentrated within specific industrial chains, and most people do not get a share.
Young people see this clearly. They do not complain; they open the food delivery app. They do not wait for policy improvements; they take projects on weekends. They do not hope to buy a house; they calculate how to survive.
The story of the gig generation is ultimately an arithmetic problem: when the speed of income growth can never catch up with the cost of living, you must either accept becoming poorer or become several people.
Taiwan's youth have chosen the latter. But this should not be celebrated. It should be treated as a problem to be solved.
References
- Budget Bureau: Median Salary and Distribution Statistics — 2025 median regular salary of NT$38,319
- 104 Job Bank: 2025-2026 Taiwan Salary and Welfare Survey Report — 39% of office workers have side jobs; Gen Z reaches 57%
- Ministry of the Interior's Real Estate Information Platform: Housing Price-to-Income Ratio Statistics — Taipei City housing price-to-income ratio is 16.36 times
- Ministry of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Agency: Food Delivery Worker Count Statistics — 145,000 nationwide delivery workers in 2022
- Digital Age: Food Delivery Law Stipulates Minimum NT$45 Per Order in 2026 — Legislative Yuan passes the Act to Guarantee the Rights of Food Delivery Workers
- 591 News: Renters Are Miserable, Average Rental in Taiwan Starts at NT$6,000 — Average rent for an independent studio apartment in Taipei is NT$14,400
- The News Lens International: Taiwan's Housing Crisis — Housing Prices Among the Highest Globally — International comparison of Taiwanese housing prices and salaries
- Taipei Times: The housing crisis is still pricing out young people (2025) — English report on the housing difficulties of Taipei youth
- Ketagalan Media: Taiwan Needs to Raise Wages Faster to Protect Its Democracy (2025) — The impact of wage stagnation on Taiwanese democracy
- Merit Times: 2024 Non-Typical Employment Ratio Hits a Low Point in 10 Years, While Part-Time Groups Reach New Highs — Budget Bureau's statistics on non-typical employment
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