The number of nonregular workers employed by South Korean financial firms fell 11 percent last year from a year earlier, but that of regular workers remained nearly unchanged, industry data showed Thursday.

A total of 26,833 temporary workers, including part-timers and contract workers, were employed by local 87 financial firms as of end-2014, compared with 30,149 non-regular workers a year earlier, according to the data compiled by corporate tracker CEO Score.

Over the same period, the overall number of financial employees edged down 1.4 percent on-year to 195,832 from 198,525, while the number of regular workers stood at 168,999, up 0.4 percent from 168,376.

Banks and non-life insurers led the decrease in the employment of temporary workers in line with their efforts to downsize last year.

Nine non-life insurance firms hired 1,777 non-regular workers last year, down 37.4 percent from 2,840 a year earlier, with their total number of employees contracting 1.6 percent on-year to 25,741.

The number of temporary workers employed by 14 local lenders slumped 27.9 percent on-year to 12,066 last year from 16,742, while they had 101,532 employees on their payrolls, down 1 percent from a year earlier.

In the securities and life insurance sectors, companies made more cuts in the number of regular workers than non-regular workers while they reduced their payrolls.

Eight life insurers added 14,463 workers last year, down 8.4 percent from a year earlier. They cut their regular workforce by 8.7 percent to 13,475, and their non-regular workforce fell by 4 percent to 988.

Twenty-three brokerage houses posted a 7.2 percent on-year drop in their overall manpower last year, with the number of regular workers slipping 10.6 percent. But the number of their non-regular workers rose 10.4 percent over the period. (Yonhap)