Office Workers Afraid of Losing Jobs... 45% Say "Employment Will Worsen in the New Year"

Workplace Gapjil 119 Survey Results
"Higher Concerns with More Precarious Employment and Lower Wages"

Among 100 office workers, 45 expect employment relations at their workplace to worsen in the new year.

Members of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) held the "10·20 KCTU General Strike Rally" at the Seodaemun Station intersection in Seoul on the 20th, urging the abolition of discrimination against workplaces with fewer than five employees, the elimination of irregular workers, and the securing of union activity rights for all workers. Photo by Kim Hyun-min kimhyun81@

On the 7th, the civic group Workplace Bullying 119 announced the results of a survey on '2024 Economic Conditions and Changes in Workplace Employment Relations' conducted with 1,000 office workers. According to the survey, 45.3% of respondents predicted that they would experience layoffs, restructuring, deterioration in employment types, wage cuts, and other issues this year.

Regarding changes in workplace employment relations due to economic recession or crisis this year, 20.6% of respondents anticipated "there will be layoffs or restructuring." Following that, 15.1% responded that "employment types will worsen, such as regular workers being converted to non-regular workers," and 9.6% said "there will be wage cuts."

The number of respondents who predicted a deterioration in employment relations was higher than those who said there would be no change in employment relations (39.1%). Only 3.2% of respondents said employment relations would improve.

Concerns about the deterioration of employment types, such as conversion from regular to non-regular employment, were higher among women (17.7%), non-regular workers (20.8%), production workers (19%), construction industry workers (25.9%), and general staff-level employees (19.9%).

Workplace Bullying 119 analyzed that the outlook for worsening employment types showed a significant gap between non-regular workers (20.8%) and regular workers (11.3%), and the lower the wage level, the higher the proportion of those worried about worsening employment types.

Choi Hye-in, a labor attorney at Workplace Bullying 119, stated, "Workers with more vulnerable employment types, in smaller workplaces, and outside labor unions are feeling the economic downturn more directly. This reflects their experience of job insecurity caused by external factors such as economic crises or COVID-19."

This survey was commissioned by Workplace Bullying 119 to the polling agency Embrain Public and conducted from December 4 to 11 last year with 1,000 office workers aged 19 and older nationwide. The sampling error is ±3.1 percentage points at a 95% confidence level.

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