One in Four Major Corporations Cuts College Graduate Hiring in First Half of Year... "Concerns Become Reality"

Hankyung Research Institute '2020 First Half New Hiring Plans' Survey
32.5% No Hiring Plans, Only 5.6% Plan to Increase Hiring

Provided by Korea Economic Research Institute

[Asia Economy Reporter Dongwoo Lee] A survey revealed that one out of four major domestic companies plans to reduce or not hire new college graduates in the first half of this year. One out of three companies also said they had not finalized their hiring plans.

On the 11th, the Korea Economic Research Institute under the Federation of Korean Industries announced that a survey on '2020 First Half New Hiring Plans' was conducted by Research & Research targeting the top 500 companies with more than 300 employees in sales.

Among the 126 responding companies, 19.0% said they would reduce hiring in the first half. 8.8% said they would not hire anyone. While 32.5% of companies had not established hiring plans for the first half, only 5.6% planned to increase hiring.

The reasons companies cited for not increasing new college graduate hiring included ▲deterioration of domestic and international economic and industry conditions (43.6%) ▲worsening internal company conditions (34.6%) ▲reduction in workforce outflow such as early resignation or job change of new employees (24.4%) ▲increased labor cost burden (19.2%) ▲reduced capacity for new hiring (10.3%).

Regarding this year's hiring market characteristics, companies explained ▲increase in experienced hires (62.7%) ▲increase in rolling recruitment for new college graduates (51.6%) ▲increase in introduction of internship programs convertible to regular positions (26.2%) ▲expansion of new hiring using artificial intelligence (AI) (26.2%) ▲strengthening fairness in screening processes through the spread of blind recruitment (15.1%) ▲expansion of industry-academia cooperation scholarships linked to hiring (7.1%). Among companies, 52.4% have already introduced rolling recruitment for new college graduates, and 14.3% plan to introduce it.

Provided by Korea Economic Research Institute

The number of new college graduate hires in the first half accounted for 58.6%, more than half of the total new college graduate hires for the year. The proportion of science and engineering hires among the planned new college graduate hires in the first half averaged 61.5%, showing a 4.0 percentage point increase in preference for science and engineering compared to 57.5% in the first half of last year. Among the 12 technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the fields where companies most need personnel are ▲big data (63.5%) ▲artificial intelligence (38.9%) ▲Internet of Things (24.6%) ▲advanced materials (21.4%) ▲robots (20.6%) ▲renewable energy (20.6%), in that order.

The average annual salary for new college graduates was surveyed at 39.99 million KRW (3.33 million KRW per month). By response range, the order was ▲40 to 45 million KRW (32.5%) ▲35 to 40 million KRW (27.7%) ▲30 to 35 million KRW (18.3%) ▲45 to 50 million KRW (13.5%) ▲50 to 55 million KRW (4.0%) ▲55 to 60 million KRW (1.6%) ▲less than 30 million KRW (1.6%).

As policies that the government and National Assembly should focus on to increase new college graduate hiring, companies cited ▲inducing corporate investment activation through deregulation (50.0%) ▲expanding incentives such as tax benefits for companies that increase employment (49.2%) ▲support for fostering new industries and new growth engines (35.7%) ▲improvement of the dual structure of the labor market (31.7%) ▲resolution of mismatches (19.0%).

Choo Kwang-ho, head of economic policy at the Korea Economic Research Institute, said, "The period during which the large company hiring survey was conducted was from the 5th to the 19th of last month, just before the novel coronavirus infection began to spread in earnest," adding, "Considering the recent rapid spread of COVID-19, the large company employment market is expected to worsen more than the results of this survey."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.