40% of foreign workers in Taiwan from Indonesia

Indonesians make up the majority of foreign workers in Taiwan — up to 40 per cent of the record number of 420,0931 people reported last month — the Council of labour Affairs (CLA) said Sunday.

The high of 172,000 Indonesians working in Taiwan is followed by the Vietnamese, at 93,000; Filipinos come in at number three with 82,000 foreign hires while Thai workers round up to 72,000.

Whereas Filipinos and Thais used to dominate Taiwan's foreign worker market in earlier years, the CLA said several factors had influenced the shift in worker nationality. The rapidly aging Taiwanese population saw the number of foreign hires working in social services as nursing personnel increase in tandem. The result is an influx of Indonesian and Vietnamese workers, who appear to specialise in the social service sector.

Indonesian workers are largely represented in both nursing and manufacturing services, causing the collective number of emigrant workers from Indonesia to soar to the top; of the 194,000 total foreign hires as nursing personnel, an overwhelming 75 per cent (14,4000 people) come from Indonesia.

The CLA said the decline of foreign workers from Thailand can be traced to the country's rapid economic growth, which in recent years created many jobs domestically and diminished the need for Thais to seek employment overseas.