Cautious Outlook
The Federation of Korean Industries recently sent a questionnaire on new employment to the top 500 sales companies and a total of 126 companies sent their replies.
According to the survey results, 39.7 percent of the 126 are yet to set up plans on new employment in the first half of this year and 15.1 percent have no new employment plans for that period. The ratio of the latter increased 1.9-fold year on year.
Fully 45.2 percent of the 126 said that they already completed planning to that end. In this group, 50.8 percent said they would not reduce the scale of employment compared to last year and 24.6 percent said they would reduce it. The ratio of the latter increased by 20.3 percentage points from a year ago.
Meanwhile, 42.9 percent of those planning to increase new employment answered that it is to prepare for the future. About 36 percent of those answered that their business conditions are favorable or expected to get better.