The number of people working for South Korea’s top 30 major business groups increased slightly last year, industry data showed Wednesday, indicating that the conglomerates did not help much in easing 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, including Samsung, Hyundai and LG stood at 1,023,574 as of the end of last year, up 12,706, or 1.3 percent, from a year earlier.
The growth rate is lower than the 1.6 percent on-year gain in 2013. It also fell far short of the 3.3 percent economic growth rate reported last year.
The job growth figures came in spite of the government’s continued call for the corporate sector to expand hiring in a bid to help ease the prolonged labor market slump as it sees more employment as a way to encourage consumption and boost the overall economy.
“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 number of regular workers, who tend to be guaranteed more job security and better salaries, did not increase fast either.
The data showed that the number of regular workers at the 30 business groups grew 1 percent on-year to 936,230, while the number of non-regular employees such as part-time workers increased 4.2 percent to 77,764. As a result, the ratio of regular workers edged down 0.2 percentage point to 92.4 percent.
Shinsegae Group, South Korea’s leading retail company, saw its payroll grow 8.6 percent — the fastest pace among the business groups — with employment at its nine affiliates standing at 40,877 last year, followed by Hyundai Motor Group, whose employment expanded 5.5 percent to 150,672.
Daewoo Engineering & Construction Co., meanwhile, saw its employment shrink 13.1 percent, the largest among the top 30 groups, while Dongbu cut the number of its workers by 11.3 percent, apparently affected by its restructuring efforts.
Samsung Group maintained its leading status as the largest job provider in South Korea, with 233,797 employees as of the end of last year.
Hyundai Motor was ranked second with 150,672, trailed by LG, Lotte and SK. The five conglomerates accounted for a combined 60.8 percent of the total payroll of the 30 business groups surveyed, the data showed. (Yonhap)
