43.1% of listed companies in South Korea cut workforce
- Charles Chau
- Topics: Home Page - News, Job Cuts, News, South Korea
This was according to private think tank Korea Economic Research Institute (KERI) which surveyed 1,874 of these firms.
Of the 696 businesses traded on the main KOSPI market, 294, or 42.2%, cut jobs during the cited period, with 43.6% of the 1,178 firms registered with the tech-heavy KOSDAQ market reducing their payrolls.
The proportion of job-cutting listed companies in 2021 was down from 52% in 2020 and was also lower than 44.3% in 2019 before the outbreak of the pandemic.
KERI, the research arm of the country’s conglomerate lobby Federation of Korean Industries, attributed the on-year drop in job-reducing firms to their improved performances bolstered by a recovery in demand and brisk business by “untact” sectors.
Yet their total workforce has yet to recover to pre-pandemic levels, the institute said.
As of the end of December last year, their total headcount stood at 1.483 million, up from 1.469 in 2020 but down from 1.497 two years earlier. Hit by the pandemic, nearly 27% of those companies pared down their workforce in 2021 for the second consecutive year.
On top of job cuts, 210 firms, or 11.2% of the total listed companies, suffered setbacks in sales and operating income due to the coronavirus fallout, according to KERI.
READ: South Korea approves US$46-billion budget to help COVID-hit businesses
The think tank called on the government to push ahead with corporate deregulation and provide tax incentives in a bid to induce local companies to invest more and expand employment, according to Yonhap.
