Unionization Rate at 13.1%... Growth Trend Breaks After 7 Years

Total of 2.72 Million Members... Korea Federation of Trade Unions Has the Most

The unionization rate, which is the proportion of wage workers eligible to join labor unions who are actually union members, was 13.1% in 2022, marking the first decline after a continuous upward trend since 2016.

The Ministry of Employment and Labor announced the '2022 National Labor Union Organization Status' containing this information on the 23rd.

Looking at recent unionization rates, there was an increasing trend from 10.3% in 2016 to 14.2% in 2021, but it decreased to 13.1% in 2022. The unionization rate is calculated by dividing the total number of union members by the number of workers eligible to join unions (wage workers eligible for union membership) and then multiplying by 100.

The 2022 unionization rate decreased by 1.1 percentage points compared to the previous year, influenced by a decline in the number of union members in the construction sector and a reduction in union members during the process of verifying errors for accurate statistical compilation.

The total number of union members was 2,722,000, a decrease of 210,000 from the previous year. Regarding the higher-level organizations to which union members belong, the Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU) maintained its position as the largest federation with 1,122,000 members. The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) had 1,100,000 members.

By organizational type, 1,641,000 members (60.3%) belonged to industrial unions, and 1,081,000 members (39.7%) belonged to enterprise unions. The unionization rates by sector were 10.1% in the private sector, 70.0% in the public sector, 67.4% in the government employee sector, and 21.1% in the teacher sector.

Unionization rates by workplace size were 36.9% for workplaces with 300 or more employees, 5.7% for 100?299 employees, 1.3% for 30?99 employees, and 0.1% for fewer than 30 employees.

Hwang Bo-guk, Director of Labor Policy at the Ministry of Employment and Labor, stated, "The unionization rate in small-scale workplaces appeared low," and added, "The government will strive to protect unorganized workers."

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