SEJONG/SEOUL, July 14 (Korea Bizwire) — A national commission on Tuesday set next year’s minimum hourly wage at 8,720 won (US$7.25), raising the legal threshold by the smallest-ever annual increase, as the country faces economic headwinds from the new coronavirus. Up to 4 million workers, whose current hourly wage is lower than the amount, will [...]
SEOUL, June 12 (Korea Bizwire) — The annual negotiations to set South Korea’s minimum wage have never been easy. But this year, talks are expected to be more complicated, as the country is facing unprecedented economic headwinds from the new coronavirus that has cut growth and jobs. On Thursday, members of the Minimum Wage Commission [...]
SEOUL, Aug. 5 (Korea Bizwire) — The government announced Monday that the 2020 minimum wage will be set at 8,590 won (US$7.16) per hour as earlier decided as it has rejected a call for more deliberation by the labor sector. The labor ministry posted next year’s minimum wage in a publication in the government’s official [...]
SEOUL, Jul. 12 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea faces the task of overhauling the decision-making scheme to set the minimum wage as repeated tensions between labor and business have raised the need to improve the negotiation-based system, experts say. The main challenge will be how to operate the government’s proposed two-layer scheme to set the [...]
SEOUL, Jul. 12 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea decided Friday to raise the minimum wage for next year by 2.9 percent, the slowest growth in a decade, as it took into account an economic slowdown and sluggish job growth. The Minimum Wage Commission, involving labor and business representatives and experts, set the minimum wage at [...]
SEOUL, Jul. 3 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea faces the task of setting next year’s minimum wage at an optimal level that can be more acceptable to divergent groups amid criticism that steep hikes in the hourly pay have weighed on job growth, experts say. The Minimum Wage Council, involving business and labor representatives and [...]
SEOUL, Jun. 13 (Korea Bizwire) — The Constitutional Court held an open hearing Thursday to decide whether the government’s hikes in the minimum wage infringe on private companies’ freedom of business activity stipulated in the Constitution. Legal representatives and experts for smaller firms and the labor ministry held a heated debate over whether the minimum [...]
SEOUL, May 21 (Korea Bizwire) — The labor ministry said Tuesday some small business owners responded to steep hikes in the minimum wage by firing workers, in its first official statement about the impact of the recent wage raises on employment. Between November 2018 and April, the government conducted an in-depth interview survey on four [...]
SEOUL, Mar. 18 (Korea Bizwire) — Employees with fewer than 15 hours of work hours per week increased in number last year, while they shrank in size in the wholesale/retail and food/lodging industries. The results overturn prior expectations that the higher minimum wage has forced employers in the wholesale/retail and food/lodging industries to hire workers [...]
SEOUL, Mar. 12 (Korea Bizwire) — Statistics Korea has revealed that the cost of hiring caregivers rose by 6.9 percent last year, the largest jump since 2005. Last year’s overall consumer price index only rose by 1.5 percent. The only other time that the cost of caregivers has jumped as much was in 2008, when [...]