Recruitment reduced by half

This year, one half of Korean companies have no plans to recruit new personnel. The main reason stems from the low operating ratio and restructuring. Also the regular recruitment method has been changed to recruitment at irregular intervals, which is usually done through the internet. On Apr. 22, the Korea Employers Federation conducted a survey on the recruitment plans of 990 companies that have more than 100 employees. Among them only 49.5 percent plan to recruit new personnel, while the remainder have no plans or have not made any decision yet.

Regarding the number of new personnel, 61.3 percent of companies plan to recruit the same number as last year, 25.5 percent to recruit more and 13.1 percent to recruit less. The increase rate in the number of new recruits has been reduced to 18.7 percent this year from 55.9 percent last year.

According to the companies, their reasons for reducing recruitment, in descending order, were a lower operating ratio (41.0 percent), business restructuring (25.6 percent) and surplus manpower stemming from automation (5.1 percent). As for the reasons for needing new staff, manpower supplement (49.5 percent) topped the list followed by investment expansion (27.2 percent).

Ha Im-Sook artemes@donga.com