24.6% of workers asked to do work when off the clock: Poll

Taipei, Jan. 23 (CNA) About 24.6 percent of employees in Taiwan said they had been asked to do work outside of working hours, the Ministry of Labor (MOL) said Friday.

The MOL said its survey on workers' life and working conditions in 2025 showed that this figure was down by 0.9 percentage points from 2024.

According to the MOL, it collected 4,029 valid questionnaires for the 2025 survey.

The survey found these workers received orders from their companies to do tasks for their employers outside of working hours by phone, over the internet, or on messaging apps like LINE.

Out of these workers, the survey showed, 5.1 percent said they were required to do the jobs immediately, down 4.4 percentage points from the 2024 poll.

The MOL said that 36.6 percent of respondents worked overtime in 2025, little changed from 36.3 percent in the 2024 poll.

In 2025, the average number of overtime working hours hit 16.2 hours a month, up from 14.7 hours in 2024, the survey showed.

The video and audio publication and information and communications industries reported 48.2 percent of their employees had worked overtime last year, followed by the electricity and fuel industry (47.6 percent) and the financial and insurance industry (45.1 percent), the survey indicated.

According to the survey, 88.1 percent of those who worked overtime last year said they were compensated with overtime pay or additional leave.

However, 21.8 percent of the "other category" in the service sector, such as laundering, beauty treatment, funeral services and housework services, said they did not receive any overtime pay or were given no compensation leave.

Meanwhile, more than 20 percent in the real estate, video/audio publication and information and communications industry also said so.