Over 3 Years, Large Corporations' Open Recruitment Rate Drops by 32%P... Irregular Recruitment Up by 41%P

Incruit '2021 New Employee Recruitment Summary' Data

Companies Hiring Over Three Digits of New Employees Cut by One-Third in 3 Years
"Causes Include Long-Term Recession Tightening Policies and Preference for Experienced Workers"

[Sejong=Asia Economy Reporter Moon Chaeseok] It has been revealed that large corporations have reduced open recruitment for new employees by more than 30% over the past three years, while increasing irregular recruitment by more than 40%.

Employment portal Incruit announced the '2021 Corporate New Employee Recruitment Results' on the 2nd, based on a 20-day survey conducted from October 29 to last month 17, targeting 317 listed companies in Korea. The survey included 74 large corporations, 91 mid-sized companies, and 152 small and medium enterprises.

First, 239 companies (75.4%) hired new employees this year. By company size, 91.9% of large corporations, 87.9% of mid-sized companies, and 59.9% of small and medium enterprises hired new employees. In particular, the new employee hiring rate of large corporations (91.9%) was 2.6 percentage points (p) lower than 94.5% in 2019, before the spread of COVID-19 in Korea. The contribution of large corporations to the domestic recruitment market shrank from 23.3% in 2019 to 11.8% last year and 7.4% this year. It has shrunk to about one-third in three years. Among large corporations, 75% hired double-digit numbers of new employees, 17.6% hired single-digit numbers, and 7.4% hired triple-digit numbers. Incruit explained, "The sharp decline in recruitment of triple-digit new employees over the past three years is due to prolonged economic recession leading to austerity policies, preference for experienced workers, and the expansion of irregular recruitment focusing on hiring only the necessary personnel at the right time."

By recruitment method, this year’s university graduate regular open recruitment accounted for 29.4%, university graduate irregular open recruitment 58.8%, and recruitment-linked internships 11.8%. Expanding the scope to the past four years, the university graduate regular open recruitment rate was 61% in 2018, 60% in 2019, 40.7% last year, and 29.4% this year, dropping 31.6 percentage points over four years. Conversely, university graduate irregular open recruitment rose from 18% in 2018, 25.6% in 2019, 37% last year, to 58.8% this year, increasing 40.8 percentage points over four years.

Seo Mi-young, CEO of Incruit, said, "While the hiring of new employees by large corporations has recovered to pre-COVID-19 levels of 2019, the scale has rather shrunk. The rapid increase in irregular open recruitment reflects the management situation of companies that find it difficult to conduct aggressive hiring, raising concerns that the employment creation power of large corporations may have deteriorated." She added, "Recently, through the 'Youth Hope ON Project,' major large corporations and the government have joined forces to create youth jobs. We hope this will serve as an opportunity for more cases of large-scale new employee recruitment (with triple-digit annual hires) to increase again, revitalizing the market next year."