Wages Up 5.4%; 1.7% Lower Than Last Year

The employers and employees have agreed this year to a lower wage increase than the rate of last year.

According to the Ministry of Labor, 879 enterprises among 5218 enterprises, which employ over 100 workers, have agreed to a 5.4 percent of wage increase in average which is 1.7 percent lower than last year.

21.3 percent of them has either frozen their wage (183 companies) or had decreased (4 companies). At the same period of last year, only 14.4 percent of the enterprises froze their wage and only one enterprise had reduced its wage.

The wage increase rates are agreed on 6.4 percent by the companies which have 300-499 employees and on 5.0 percent by the enterprises with 1000-4999 workers. In terms of industries, educational service field ranks top with 7.3 percent. On the contrary, transportation and storage industries (3.8 percent) and Construction industries (3.6 percent) recorded low wage increase this year.

Meanwhile, the rate of the settlement of wage negotiation (16.8 percent) appeared lower than that of the same period of last year (22.3 percent). In particular, the settlement rate of the large industries was relatively low: 9.4 percent for the enterprises with 1000-4999 and 11.9 percent for the enterprises which employed over 5000.

Jung Young-Gwan yongari@donga.com