(image: Korea Bizwire)
SEOUL, Nov. 12 (Korea Bizwire) — It’s getting more difficult to become an executive at large companies in South Korea.
The number of employees at the nation’s top 100 companies in terms of annual revenues totaled 847,442 this year, down 6,528 from a year ago, according to headhunting firm Unico Search Inc.
The number of executives at such companies stood at 6,578, down 77 from a year before.
The number of employees per executive position stood at 128.8 this year. In other words, only 0.77 percent of the 840,000 employees are executives, the lowest since 2011.
The number of employees per executive position rose to 128.3 (0.78 percent) last year from 106.8 (0.94 percent) in 2015 and 105.2 (0.95 percent) in 2011, indicating that the share of executives among a company’s total workforce has been on a downward trend.
Among the nation’s top 100 companies, Samsung Electronics Co. has the largest number of executives, with an estimated 1,049 unregistered executives this year.
For Samsung, the number of employees per executive position has been on an upward trend rising to 101.7 this year from 100.6 in 2019 and 80.7 in 2014.
“Many companies are likely to have stronger tendency to reduce the number of executives this year in a preemptive move to cope with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Unico Search said.
“This means that their employees would likely to have lower chances of becoming executives next year than this year.”
M. H. Lee (mhlee@koreabizwire.com)
