Regular employees earned 1.6 million won more per month than non-regular employees... Wage gap reaches record high

The Number of Non-Regular Workers Remains in the 8 Million Range for 2 Consecutive Years
Increase in Non-Regular Workers Among the 5060 Generation ... Voluntary Non-Regular Workers Also Increased Compared to a Year Ago

Kim Kyung-hee, Director of the Employment Statistics Division at Statistics Korea, is announcing the results of the supplementary survey on types of employment for August 2022 at the Government Complex Sejong in Sejong City on the morning of the 25th. Photo by Yonhap News

[Asia Economy Reporter Park Hyun-joo] The wage gap between non-regular and regular workers has widened to about 1.6 million KRW, marking an all-time high.

According to the supplementary survey on types of employment in the economically active population released by Statistics Korea on the 25th, the average monthly wage of regular workers from June to August this year was 3.48 million KRW, an increase of 144,000 KRW compared to a year ago. Meanwhile, the wage of non-regular workers was 1.881 million KRW, up by 112,000 KRW. This means regular workers earned 1.599 million KRW more per month on average than non-regular workers. Excluding part-time workers, the average wage of non-regular workers was 2.61 million KRW, which is 870,000 KRW less than the average wage of regular workers.

The number of non-regular workers remained in the 8 million range for the second consecutive year. As of August this year, the number of non-regular workers was 8.15 million, an increase of 90,000 from the same month last year (8.066 million). However, during the same period, the number of regular workers (13.568 million) increased by 641,000, causing the proportion of non-regular workers to fall by 0.9 percentage points to 37.5% compared to 38.4% in the same month last year.

The age groups where the number of non-regular workers increased were those in their 60s (151,000) and 50s (58,000). Conversely, the number of non-regular workers decreased in their 40s (-96,000) and 30s (-33,000), while the 20s age group remained steady at 1.414 million compared to the same month last year.

By gender, women accounted for 55.2% of non-regular workers, 10.4 percentage points higher than men (44.8%). The number of female non-regular workers increased by 13,000 to 4.503 million, and male non-regular workers increased by 78,000 to 3.653 million.

The industry with the largest increase in non-regular workers was Accommodation and Food Services (77,000). Following this were Health and Welfare (31,000) and Manufacturing (29,000), where non-regular workers increased, while Construction (45,000) saw a decrease.

Among non-regular workers, 62.8% voluntarily chose their employment type, an increase of 2.9 percentage points from a year ago. Reasons for choosing non-regular employment included ▲satisfaction with working conditions (59.7%) ▲stable job (21.3%) ▲combining studies or childcare (11.9%) ▲earning income proportional to effort or flexible working hours (7.1%).

The average tenure at the current workplace for non-regular workers was 2 years and 6 months, one month longer than a year ago, while the average weekly working hours decreased by 0.6 hours to 29.6 hours. Regarding social insurance enrollment rates, employment insurance (54.0%) and health insurance (51.7%) enrollment rates increased by 1.4 percentage points each, but national pension (38.3%) enrollment rate decreased by 0.1 percentage points.

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