By Lee Hyo-sik
Staff Reporter
Despite lower earnings, Mom-and-pop shop and other small business owners hold greater job satisfaction than salaried employees, as they work in a more flexible and less stressful environment, according to a study by the Korea Labor Institute (KLI) released Friday. Also, the self-employed highly rated their ability to take time off for leisure activities.
The institute said self-employed business owners recorded an average of 2.98 points out of five on a job satisfaction scale, higher than 2.66 for salaried workers.
Small business owners also reported 2.98 points on job security and 3.53 points on wages, respectively, compared to 2.81 and 3.23 by salary earners. But the self-employed were more pessimistic about their prospects for personal and professional development.
Small store owners and other self-employed earned an average of 1.64 million won per month last year, accounting for only 61 percent of salaried workers' monthly average of 2.6 million won. Also, 7.1 percent of self-run businesses incurred losses in 2007.
``It is true that many company workers have been laid off due to corporate restructuring since the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis. Some had no choice but to open their own businesses to make a living, pushing up the self-employed workforce to close to 30 percent,'' a KLI researcher said, adding there are a greater number of self-employed these days who voluntarily quit corporate jobs to start independent businesses.
The institute also found that the more educated a self-employed person is, the higher income he or she can earn. Also, the self-employed who are in business for an extended period of time tend to make more money than start-ups, while earnings correlate positively with the age of the business owners.