While regular workers gain, millions on the margins face shrinking wages, fewer benefits, and limited protections — a quiet divide that’s now impossible to ignore. (Image created by ChatGPT)
As non-regular workers fall further behind in wages, benefits, and protections, a growing segment of the workforce risks being left out of the country’s economic future.
SEOUL, April 30 (Korea Bizwire) — In South Korea’s rapidly changing labor market, a widening wage chasm is sending a sobering message: for non-regular workers, the dream of financial parity is drifting even further out of reach.
A new government report released Tuesday shows that in 2024, the wage gap between regular and non-regular employees grew at its fastest pace in over a decade. While both groups saw earnings rise, regular workers pulled far ahead — and for the first time in five years, the average hourly wage of non-regular workers dropped below 70 percent of their full-time counterparts’.
On paper, wages were up. The average hourly wage across all workers stood at 25,156 won, a 10 percent increase from the previous year. But the real story was hidden beneath the surface: a reduction in working days artificially boosted hourly rates, while monthly income saw only modest gains.
Regular employees — who typically receive fixed monthly or annual salaries — earned an average of 27,703 won per hour, an 11.7 percent rise. But non-regular workers, many of whom work shorter hours and lack long-term contracts, saw their hourly earnings rise just 4.7 percent to 18,404 won.
The result: non-regular workers earned only 66.4 percent of what regular workers did — the lowest ratio since records began in 2008.
The current structure of the Labor Standards Act largely exempts businesses with fewer than five employees from key protections. (Image created by AI/ChatGPT)
It’s a sharp reversal from recent years, when wage parity had hovered comfortably above the 70 percent threshold. Now, that progress appears to be unraveling.
Labor ministry officials attributed the trend to a spike in short-term and part-time employment, along with the structural protection that regular workers enjoy through fixed compensation, even as workdays fluctuated.
And yet, behind the data is a deeper story of inequality and insecurity. While the proportion of low-wage workers — those earning less than two-thirds of the national median — declined slightly, nearly one in six workers still falls into that category. Union membership, a traditional safeguard against wage suppression, also ticked down to 9.7 percent.
Insurance coverage paints a further picture of disparity: nearly all regular workers remained enrolled in South Korea’s social safety nets, including health insurance and national pension schemes. But for non-regular workers, those benefits remain uneven, with coverage rates ranging from 68 to 82 percent — and trending downward in key areas like the national pension.
Even in retirement planning, the divide is stark. While 60 percent of regular workers were enrolled in employer pension plans, just 28.8 percent of non-regular workers had access to the same.
As South Korea’s economy slows and its labor force ages, the growing disparity between its core and peripheral workforce is no longer just a statistic — it’s a looming structural challenge. Unless addressed through targeted reforms and more equitable protections, the wage divide threatens to harden into a defining feature of the country’s post-pandemic economy.
M. H. Lee (mhlee@koreabizwire.com)
