(image: Kobiz Media / Korea Bizwire)
SEOUL, Nov. 1 (Korea Bizwire) — A market research firm said Thursday that there is less than a 1 percent chance that ordinary South Korean employees could climb the corporate ladder and reach senior management positions.
South Korea’s top 100 companies by sales have 6,843 executives out of 852,136 employees this year, the Korea CXO Institute said, citing the companies’ regulatory filings as of the end of June.
This showed a company has 1 executive for every 125 employees, meaning there is just a 0.8 percent chance that employees could become executives in their respective companies.
By comparison, the ratio of executives out of employees stood at 0.95 percent in 2011 and 0.94 percent in 2015.
The latest finding showed that it has become more difficult for rank-and-file workers to get promoted to senior posts at major South Korean companies, said Oh Il-sun, the director of the Korea CXO Institute.
The Korea CXO Institute said South Korea’s state-run Korea Electric Power Corp. has just 11 executives out of 22,258 employees, lowering the ratio of executives vis-a-vis employees to 0.05 percent.
It means 2,024 employees compete against each other for a single executive slot, the institute said.
South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics had 1,040 executives out of 101,953 employees as of end of June, translating into 1 senior manager for every 97.4 employees.
(Yonhap)
