"Major Domestic Conglomerates' Global Employees Decrease by 30,000 in 3 Years"

[Asia Economy Reporter Jeong Hyunjin] The number of employees at major domestic conglomerates has decreased by about 27,000 over the past three years.

On the 17th, Korea CXO Research Institute, a corporate analysis specialist, surveyed 100 major domestic conglomerates that submitted sustainability management reports. As of last year, these companies employed a total of 1,388,408 employees. The number of employees decreased by about 18,000 from 1,415,496 in 2018 to 1,397,317 in 2019, and further decreased by about 9,000 last year.

Among the 100 major conglomerates, 4 out of 10 employees were employed at overseas business sites. Of the total 1,388,000 employees last year, 63% belonged to domestic business sites, while the remaining 37% were employed at overseas business sites in Asia, Europe, the Americas, and Africa. Thirty of the 100 companies had more than 10,000 employees, and among them, Samsung Electronics and Hyundai Motor Company had more than 100,000 employees.

(Source: Korea CXO Research Institute)

By company, Samsung Electronics had the largest number of employees last year with 267,937. This was followed by Hyundai Motor Company (121,403), LG Electronics (75,888), Samsung Display (72,876), LG Display (63,360), Kia (51,899), and SK Hynix (36,854).

In the case of Samsung Electronics, the number of overseas employees decreased by about 23,000 from 185,380 in 2019 to 161,707 last year, but the number of domestic employees increased by about 4,300 from 102,059 to 106,330. In terms of proportion, overseas employees accounted for 60.4%, and domestic employees accounted for 39.6%. Other Samsung affiliates such as Samsung Display (69.4%), Samsung Electro-Mechanics (67.9%), and Samsung SDI (61.7%) also had a higher proportion of overseas employees than domestic employees.

On the other hand, Hyundai Motor Company had 72,020 employees (59.3%) out of about 120,000 total employees belonging to domestic business sites. Kia and LG Electronics also had more than half of their employees belonging to domestic business sites, with proportions of 67.7% and 52.4%, respectively.

Oh Ilseon, director of Korea CXO Research Institute, said, "As the importance of national safety systems has been highlighted due to the prolonged experience of pandemics such as COVID-19, there is a high possibility that companies will deeply explore ways to organically contribute more to job creation, related industries, and regional development by expanding core research and development (R&D) facilities and production bases domestically rather than overseas in the future."

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