36% of Companies Say "This Year's Lunar New Year Market Worse Than Last Year"

74% of Companies Say "Taking 5 Days Off for This Year's Lunar New Year Holiday"

[Asia Economy Reporter Changhwan Lee] One-third of domestic companies feel that the business situation during this year's Seollal holiday has worsened compared to last year. Seventy-four percent of companies plan to take about five days off during this year's Seollal holiday period.

The Korea Employers Federation announced on the 23rd that, based on the results of the "2022 Seollal Holiday Leave Survey" conducted on 512 companies nationwide with five or more employees, 73.7% of companies implementing Seollal leave plan to take '5 days' off.

This year's Seollal holiday spans a total of five days, including Saturday, Sunday, and the three official Seollal holidays. Aside from five days, 13.4% of companies plan to take four days or fewer off, and 13.0% plan to take six days or more.

Among companies taking six days or more off, 72.7% cited "mandatory leave according to collective agreements or employment rules rather than workload or cost issues" as the reason.

By company size, 29.6% of companies with 300 or more employees responded that they take 'six days or more off,' which is higher than the 10.2% of companies with fewer than 300 employees. Conversely, 7.0% of companies with 300 or more employees responded that they take 'four days or fewer off,' which is lower than the 14.4% of companies with fewer than 300 employees, showing differences by company size.

Many respondents said the Seollal business situation is similar to or worse than last year. Fifty-three point nine percent of responding companies said the business situation during this year's Seollal holiday is "about the same as last year."

However, 36.3% responded that the situation has worsened, which is relatively high, while only 9.8% said it has improved, indicating that a significant number of companies feel the business situation this year is unfavorable.

By company size, 12.0% of companies with 300 or more employees said the Seollal business situation has improved, which is 2.6 percentage points higher than the 9.4% of companies with fewer than 300 employees. Conversely, 37.0% of companies with fewer than 300 employees said the situation has worsened, which is 5.0 percentage points higher than the 32.0% of companies with 300 or more employees.

The proportion of companies planning to pay Seollal bonuses was 61.9%, a decrease of 1.6 percentage points from last year's 63.5%. The proportion of companies paying Seollal bonuses was higher among companies with 300 or more employees (68.0%) than those with fewer than 300 employees (60.9%).

This year's Seollal bonuses are expected to be paid at "the same level as last year," with 91.0% of respondents indicating this. Other responses included 4.7% saying they would pay less than last year and 4.3% saying they would pay more than last year.

Regarding the factor expected to be the greatest burden on achieving this year's business performance, 43.0% of responding companies cited "rising raw material prices." Notably, this response was higher among companies with fewer than 300 employees (44.9%) compared to those with 300 or more employees (31.9%).

Other factors included "rising labor costs" (23.7%), "spread of COVID-19 variants" (18.3%), "global supply chain instability" (6.8%), "others" (4.2%), "interest rate hikes" (3.0%), and "environmental and climate issue responses" (1.0%), in that order.