74 percent of business owners render this year’s minimum wage high.

It has been revealed that seven out of 10 Korean business runners find this year’s hourly minimum wage or 8,350 won high, making the share the highest since related data started to be collected in 2010.

According to a survey on the effects of the minimum wage released on Sunday by the Minimum Wage Council, 46.5 percent of business owners and 27.9 percent answered that this year’s minimum wage is “very high” and “slightly high,” respectively. With them combined, the share of those finding it “high” is 74.4 percent.

It is the highest share since the survey was first executed by the Minimum Wage Council in 2010. The minimum wage of last year or 7,530 won, 16.4 percent up from the previous year, was considered “high” by 68.8 percent of respondents.

The council publishes report results after it studies the effects of the minimum wage and deliberates them every year. With 2,554 businesses surveyed this year, the report was written in June by a research team led by economics professor Choi Kang-sik at Yonsei University, which provided a basis for the next year’s minimum wage or 8,590 won.

Some 23.2 percent of respondents, who run their entity, find this year’s minimum wage “moderate,” while 1.8 percent and 0.6 percent of them consider it “slightly low” and “very low,” respectively. In other words, only two out of 100 business runners think the figure is “low.”

By company scale, the shares of “very high” were 50.7 percent of businesses without any regular or full-time workers; 46.8 percent of those with one to four; 45.7 percent of those with five to nine; 40.7 percent of those with 10 to 29; and 40.3 percent of those with 30 to 99. It has been turned out smaller businesses are more likely to feel burdened with the minimum wage.

Among 5,191 employees who were asked the same question on this year’s minimum wage, 12.4 percent answered that it is “low” – 53.7 percent for “moderate” and 33.9 percent for “very high.” Likewise, a higher share of workers say that this year’s minimum wage is high than those who see it low, among workers with direct benefits of the raised wage.


Sung-Yeol Yoo ryu@donga.com