Number of irregular workers in South Korea grows by 530,000

In contrast, the number of regular workers rose from 11.94 million to 11.96 million, up 2.0% in the same period, according to data from Statistics Korea. During this period, the overall percentage of irregular workers grew from 41.6% to 43.0%.

The number of irregular workers this year is one of the highest since 2017 when it reached 8.43 million. About 94.3% or 8.52 million irregular workers are temporary employees, who are exposed to job instability.

The average monthly pay of an irregular worker was at 1.8 million won (US$1,515), up by 3.9% from last year (1.73 million won or US1,457), while that of a regular worker was 3.44 million won (US$2,897), up by 2.5% from last year (3.36 million won or US$2,829).

READ: Number of wage workers in South Korea rises in Q2

The wage ratio of irregular workers to regular workers stood at 52.2%, improving by 0.7 percentage point from last year (51.5%). Statistics Korea’s data also showed that the number of wage workers reached 20.99 million people in August this year, up by 540,000 from the same month last year, according to The Korea Bizwire.