The main reason behind the disparity is the income gap that already exists among newly-hired employees. (image: Korea Bizwire)
SEOUL, Nov. 28 (Korea Bizwire) — A recent study has revealed that the typical South Korean employee requires average of 11 years to reach an annual salary of 50 million won (US$44,360).
Saramin, an online job matching platform, conducted a study on 824 companies to find that approximately 11.3 years are needed to reach an annual salary of 50 million won.
Employees at large conglomerates only needed 7.4 years on average to reach the 50 million won milestone.
Employees at middle-sized companies took 10.2 years to reach the same level, while employees at smaller firms took 11.7 years on average.
In addition, more than 40 percent of all employees employed for fewer than five years at large conglomerates received an annual salary of 50 million won or more, while only 12.5 percent and 9.3 percent of all employees received the same amount at medium-sized companies and smaller firms, respectively.
The main reason behind the disparity is the income gap that already exists among newly-hired employees.
While the average annual salary of new recruits among all companies was 25.93 million won, new employees at large conglomerates received as much as 37.30 million won each year.
For medium-sized and small firms, employees received 29.81 million won and 24.62 million won, respectively.
Employees in the financial and insurance sectors were the fastest at achieving 50 million won in annual salary, requiring only six or seven years on average.
They were followed by those in shipbuilding and heavy industry (9.6 years), automobiles and transportation (9.8 years), food and beverage (9.9 years), machinery and steel (10.5 years) and construction (10.6 years).
Those working in manufacturing took as long as 12.3 years on average, as well as electricity and electronics (12 years) and the service sector (11.8 years).
H. M. Kang (hmkang@koreabizwire.com)
