Half of Joseon and Semiconductor Companies Say "Labor Shortage"

[Asia Economy Reporter Choi Dae-yeol] A survey has revealed a serious shortage of manpower in industries considered future growth sectors.

According to the results of the Future New Growth Industry Manpower Supply and Demand Perception Survey released by the Korea Employers Federation on the 8th, 52.2% of companies in the shipbuilding sector reported a shortage of manpower. The semiconductor sector followed with 45.0%, future cars (Miraecha) with 43.0%, and biohealth with 29.0%. A total of 415 companies responded to this survey.

The main reasons cited for the manpower shortage were "frequent job changes and resignations after employment" (shipbuilding and semiconductor) and "lack of experienced applicants in the relevant fields" (future cars and biohealth). By job type, production roles were reported as the most lacking across all four industries. It is expected that the shortage of production personnel will persist even five years from now. For other roles such as research and development, design, quality control, maintenance, sales, purchasing, and marketing, many companies found it difficult to make a judgment at this point.

To alleviate the manpower shortage, companies responded that support measures are needed to provide funding or operate customized training programs. There were also responses emphasizing the need to cultivate tailored talent through industry-academia-research collaboration or to strengthen the specialized high school talent development system.

Lim Young-tae, head of the Employment Policy Team at the Korea Employers Federation, stated, "In the short term, we need to strengthen on-site customized vocational training and ease employment regulations to resolve mismatches in the field. In the mid to long term, efforts should focus on retaining and settling global top talent as well as fostering creative convergence talent to accumulate human capital." He added, "In a rapidly changing environment with deepening technological convergence, agile cooperation between educational institutions and companies is essential."

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