Labor Slump Continues

 

South Korea's top 30 business groups only slightly increased the number of workers last year, industry data showed Wednesday. It indicated that the conglomerates seem to be not so willing to ease the country's prolonged labor market slump. 

According to the data by CEO Score, a local corporate researcher, the number of people employed by the country's 30 large business groups are added up to 1,023,574 as of the end of last year. The number increased by 12,706 workers (or 1.3 percent) compared to a year earlier. However, the growth rate of employment is lower than the 1.6 percent of 2013. Even worse, the number of non-regular workers increased 4 times faster than that of the regular employees. The number of regular jobs guaranteeing better security, more salary, and extra payments did not increase quickly either. The result implies that the labor market situation figures a need for improvement.

The Park Geun-hye government continues to urge leading groups to increase hiring to revitalize the economy and encourage consumption. However, a survey showed that new employment this year will likely decline as companies are reluctant to pay the increasing labor costs, though they are enlarging investment.

“For the past three years, the job growth rate stood in the 1 percent range ... It is very worrisome that the largest business groups provide relatively quality jobs, but they had not expanded much,” a CEO Score official said. 

The data said that among the leading companies, Shinsegae Group, Hyundai Motor, and Hyundai Department Store scored the highest new employment rate of over 5 percent. On the other hand, Daewoo Engineering & Construction Co. reduced its employment by 13.1 percent, the largest decrease among the top 30 groups, and Dongbu cut the number of its workers by 11.3 percent.  

The Shinsegae Group, South Korea's leading retail company, was recorded as the largest employer in the 2014 labor market, expanding its employment by 5.5 percent up to 150,672 from 40,877 last year.

Hyundai Motor was ranked second with 150,672 new hires, a 5.5 percent increase, followed by Lotte (3.9 percent), Hanhwa Group (3.1 percent), and POSCO (3 percent). Those five conglomerates accounted for a combined 60.8 percent of the total payroll of the 30 business groups surveyed, the data showed.

The highest rate of regular workers was released by OCI Company Ltd., where 98.1 percent of all employees are working in a permanent position. YoungPoong Corp. (97.7 percent), Hyosung (97.5 percent), Mirae Asset and Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering co., Ltd. (each 97.0 percent), and LG Corporation (96.9 percent) followed.

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