Wage gaps between employees of big corporations and small firms have steadily widened over the past decade to the detriment of workers at small-size employers, the labor ministry said Tuesday.
The average monthly wage at small firms, employing fewer than 300 workers, reached 2.64 million won ($2,362) last year, accounting for only 63.2 percent of the amount earned by employees of big companies with more than 300 workers, said the Ministry of Employment and Labor.
The wage gap has risen steadily since 2000, the ministry also said.
In 2000, small-firm employees took home 71.3 percent of what their big-company peers earned, but the rate dropped to the 65-percent level in the mid-2000's before hitting 62.9 percent in 2010, according to the ministry.
Experts said the broadening wage difference mostly stemmed from thinning trickle-down effects, which convey benefits of economic growth to economic fringes like small-size employers.
"The widening wage gap came because benefits of brisk export performance by conglomerates failed to reach small and medium-sized companies," said Yoon Sang-ha, an analyst at LG Economic Research Institute.
Boosting earnings and employment at smaller companies was one of the top policy priorities for the Lee Myung-bak administration, which stepped up efforts to assist those hard hit by the recent global financial crisis. (Yonhap)