The share of long-time workers among all wage earners in South Korea has plummeted from its previous value to the average level of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member countries, according to a survey. In particular, the proportion of wage earners who work more than 60 hours per week was smaller than the OECD average.
The number of wage earners working 50 hours or longer per week in 2022 was 12.0 percent (2.53 million) based on actual hours worked and 10.3 percent (2.24 million) based on the number of normal contractual working hours, respectively, according to the International Comparative Report on the Proportion of Long-Time Workers released by the Korea Enterprise Federation (KEF) on Feb. 13. The two were 0.1 percentage points and 1.8 percentage points higher than the OECD average of 10.5 percent, respectively. In addition, 3.2 percent (670,000) of wage earners worked more than 60 hours per week in terms of actual working hours and 2.7 percent (580,000) in terms of normal contractual working hours, both of which were lower than the OECD average of 3.8 percent.
“Statistics on the proportion of long-time workers that exactly meet the OECD criterion were not available, so we analyzed the original data from Statistics Korea, which was similar in concept to the OECD criteria, and analyzed it in two ways,” the KEF explained. The actual working hours are calculated with working hours at all jobs (full-time, part-time and others), which may be overestimated compared to the OECD criterion, and normal contractual working hours are calculated with working hours at main jobs, which may be slightly underestimated compared to the OECD criterion.
Over the past two decades, the share of long-time workers in South Korea has declined steeply. In 2002, the share of wage earners working 50 hours or more was 47.9 percent in actual working hours and 42.6 percent in normal contractual working hours. But over the past 20 years, the share of long-time workers has decreased by 32.3 percentage points and 35.9 percentage points in the two aspects, respectively. The average OECD decrease over the same period is only 2.1 percentage points.
In addition, the share of wage earners working 60 hours or more per week in 2002 was 22.1 percent in terms of actual working hours and 20 percent in terms of normal contractual working hours, down by 17.3 percentage points and 18.9 percentage points, respectively, over the 20-year period. The OECD average is a drop of 2 percentage points over the same period.