TSMC paid its workers substantially more last year, good news for its 91,000 staff and a sign the chipmaker is spending heavily to hold onto talent as it expands worldwide.

• Median total pay for TSMC employees worldwide reached about NT$2.95 million, up NT$490,000 from the year before.
• The company hired more than 9,000 new people and now employs staff of 64 nationalities, though Taiwan, China, the US and Japan account for almost all of them.
• Total spending on salaries and benefits has doubled since 2020, and pay per employee climbed from NT$2.53 million to NT$4.33 million.
• Cash bonuses and profit sharing at Taiwan sites alone came to more than NT$206 billion last year.
• CEO C.C. Wei earns roughly 822 times the median worker, and his pay rose about 6.7 times faster than the typical employee's.

Outlook: With plants going up in Japan, the US and Europe, TSMC's wage bill looks set to keep climbing as it competes for scarce chip engineers.