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 [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 25 (Korea Bizwire) — Slightly over 1 in 5 part-timers in South Korea receive less hourly pay than the nation’s minimum wage, a poll showed Friday. According to the survey of 5,654 part-time workers taken by Albamon, a recruitment website for part-timers, 21.2 percent of the respondents said their hourly wage hovers below [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 21 (Korea Bizwire) — According to convenience store industry watchers on Sunday, it has become almost impossible to find part-time work at convenience stores due to the increase in the minimum wage this year. With sales declining due to a sluggish economy and excessive competition, convenience store owners are having trouble paying part-time [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 18 (Korea Bizwire) — More than half of South Koreans think this year’s minimum wage hike will have a negative effect on the economy, a survey showed Friday. The poll of 1,002 adults nationwide by Gallup Korea found 52 percent of people predict negative economic effects from the latest minimum wage increase. Only [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 15 (Korea Bizwire) – A recent study has revealed that 8 out of 10 South Korean companies expect that this year’s rise in the minimum wage will negatively affect hiring plans. Saramin, a South Korean job search portal, asked 906 firms in South Korea, 77 percent of which said they felt uncomfortable hiring [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 7 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s mom-and-pop stores on Monday called on the government to reflect their views in revising the minimum wage structure so as to minimize the fallout from rising labor costs. In a press conference held in Seoul, Choi Seung-jae, chairman of the Korea Federation of Micro Enterprise, whose organization [...]