Job-seekers attend a job fair held on July 16 in Gumi, North Gyeongsang Province. (Yonhap)
About 58.5 percent of the companies across the country have plans to hire new workers in the second half of this year, a survey showed Monday, but only two-thirds have job openings for those without prior experience
In the survey of 371 companies by local job-search platform Saramin, 27.5 percent of respondents had no plans to hire new workers, and the remaining 14 percent were unsure.
The survey targeted hiring plans for “regular workers,” meaning those in permanent employment until the legal retirement age in Korea. A “Non-regular worker” refers to those working for periods specified in their employment contracts.
Some 58.5 percent of the companies with hiring plans for the second half said they would recruit both workers with previous experience in the field and those without; 32.3 percent said they would only hire experienced workers.
Although a smaller number of companies were hiring inexperienced workers, most were seeking to recruit young workers. Of those with hiring plans, 87.4 percent said they planned to hire workers with five years or less of experience in the field, and 60.4 percent said they wanted workers with a maximum of three years of experience.
The average starting salary for entry-level workers for the second half was compiled to be 32.98 million won ($23,790). For comparison, the salary for a person receiving the minimum hourly wage of 10,030 won and working the standard 40-hour week would be 25.15 million won.
While the recent survey indicates that nearly 60 percent of companies intend to hire in the second half, it may not go as planned.
A December survey by Saramin had shown that 80.2 percent of the 414 surveyed companies hired new employees — with or without previous work experience — throughout the year, but 49.7 percent of the companies did not hire as many workers as planned.
minsikyoon@heraldcorp.com