Joins the Big Four Employers
Coupang has emerged as one of the Big Four in the job market.
According to employment figures, based on the numbers paying into the National Pension Service's pension fund, Coupang Fulfillment Services, which operates Coupang and its logistics centers, employed 37,584 people as of June 2020. This means it ranks fourth after Samsung Electronics Co., Hyundai Motor Co., and LG Electronics Inc.
In terms of employment growth in the first half of the year, the company is in fact the No. 1 player. According to data of contributors to the national pension fund released at the end of July by CEO Score, a corporate evaluation site, Korea’s top 500 companies cut 11,880 jobs in the February-June period, while Coupang created 12,277 new jobs in the first half of this year. While 2,519 jobs were lost from 44 local retailers during the same period, Coupang created about five times this number of jobs.
Meanwhile, the increase in its ‘Coufriends’ (Coupang friends) delivery workers has played a big role in Coupang's job creation. At the end of July, Coupang announced that the number of Coufriends had surpassed 10,000 and the company changed the name of its delivery staff from ‘Coupang Man’ to ‘Coufriends’ at that time.
Coufriends are employees directly hired by Coupang, unlike normal delivery drivers who do a similar task. In addition, Coupang provides them with a five-day workweek with 130 days off a year, plus 15 days of annual leave.
“Coupang indeed has a huge physical infrastructure,” a Coupang official said. “Unlike other IT companies that do not need investment in human resources, we need continuous investment in people.”