Major Companies to Decrease New Hires Next Year

Major companies reportedly plan to reduce their number of new hires next year.

In a survey jointly conducted by the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Internet-based staffing agency JobKorea on November 29 with 500 top-sales domestic corporations (421 respondents) as subjects, the number of new employees that 272 companies will recruit next year is 30,109, a 1.8 percent decrease compared to this year’s 30,665.

50 companies (11.9%) answered that they had no new recruitment plans, and 149 companies (35.4%) said they were undecided at this point.

The companies that will decrease new hires cited “Sufficient labor force” (26.1%) and “Want to cut down on labor costs” (26.1%) as their main reasons.

Other reasons were: “Next year’s economic situation is unclear” (17.4%); “The profit situation” (13.0%); and “Decreases in sales and profits” (8.7%).

The businesses that plan to recruit new personnel are electronics (7.9%), automobiles (3.8%), finance (1.8%) and heavy shipbuilding industries (1.7%), while manufacturing (―17.3%), trade and commerce (―14.2%), petrochemicals (―12.2%), steel machineries (―11.7%), and others said they are planning to decrease new hires dramatically.

The number of new hires by industry is 5,445 for finance and insurance, 3,245 for construction, 2,940 for electronics, 2,655 for automobiles, 2,460 for heavy shipbuilding, 2,410 for trade logistics, 2,260 for food-related industries, 2,230 for air transport, and 1,700 for information and communications.

The respondents in the survey said personality, values, and other traits (33.0%) were the most important evaluation factors in hiring new personnel. Field knowledge (23.0%), work motivation (13.8%), organizational adaptation (13.0%), foreign languages (6.5%), and internship work experience (3.0%) were also cited.

woogija@donga.com