SK hynix headquarters in Icheon, Gyeonggi Province. Yonhap News
The number of workers in Korea’s semiconductor industry is holding firmly above the 100,000 mark, buoyed by a super cycle in memory chips. SK hynix (000660.KS) in particular added more than 2,100 employees last year, moving aggressively to secure talent.
The number of SK hynix employees stood at 34,466 as of the end of last year, up 2,152 from 32,314 a year earlier, according to the semiconductor industry and regulatory filings Friday. Over the same period, the workforce at Samsung Electronics’ (005930.KS) Device Solutions (DS) division held steady at 78,669, the same level as the previous year.
The combined workforce of the two semiconductor giants rose from 110,983 to 113,135, maintaining a level above 110,000. In addition, the number of employees at DB HiTek, a power semiconductor company, increased by 170 from 2,051 to 2,221 over the same period, with employment across the entire semiconductor ecosystem expanding in tandem.
Semiconductor companies are running their recruitment systems on a year-round basis to attract talent. Early this year, SK hynix renamed its career recruitment brand “Monthly hynix Talent” to “Monthly Hiway” and fully expanded its on-demand hiring system to include not only office positions but also full-time roles centered on production and engineering.
Samsung, the only one among the four largest conglomerates that maintains large-scale regular open recruitment, is also implementing a plan to newly hire 60,000 people over the next five years (12,000 per year), focusing on future growth areas such as semiconductors, artificial intelligence (AI), and bio.
Yang Joon-seok, a professor of economics at the Catholic University of Korea, said, “Right now, domestic businesses, excluding specific industries such as semiconductors, are very stagnant, so as factory automation speeds up with the introduction of robots and the like, the polarization of employment within manufacturing will worsen further.” He added, “We need to secure flexibility through labor structure reform so that companies can hire the workers they need in a timely manner.”