About 70 percent of surveyed South Korean workers said they plan to change jobs this year, an online job recruitment platform reported Thursday.
The survey of 1,467 employees by Saramin found that those with assistant manager-level posts were most likely to seek a job change, as 76.2 percent of them said they plan to move to a new company, followed by 71.4 percent of those with general manager titles and 70.4 percent of those in manager posts.
Respondents with executive-level jobs were least likely to seek a new job at 56.6 percent. Some 68.2 percent of those in regular staff positions said they wanted to get a new job.
The top reason for looking for a new job was better pay (56 percent), followed by the company's lack of vision and slow growth (41.4 percent), its inability to foster employee growth (31.3 percent) and an insufficient welfare system (26 percent).
Of the respondents who expressed willingness to get a new job, 35.2 percent said they were unsure about their chances of success. When asked why they lacked confidence, 61.6 percent said they feared a prolonged economic slump. Some 58 percent said it was because fewer companies are looking to hire.
The South Korean economy in 2024 logged weaker growth than initially projected, with the Bank of Korea saying in January that the country's real gross domestic product increased by 2 percent. It was lower than the central bank's forecast of 2.2 percent growth, projected in the second half of 2023.
The country's job market shrank accordingly, with the Federation of Korean Industries' August report showing that 17.5 percent of the top 500 corporations in sales had no plans to hire recruits in the second half of the year, up 0.9 percent from the same period in 2023.
According to corporate analysis firm Leaders Index, the number of employees at 339 state-run organizations that made their employment information public went from 400,668 in 2022 to 396,011 in the third quarter of 2024. Of those agencies, 223 hired fewer people than before, 99 hired more and 17 sustained the number of recruits.
minsikyoon@heraldcorp.com
