By Park Hyong-ki
Public enterprises that have a significant number of irregular workers are not likely to expand their workforce with new recruits in the near future, industry sources said Wednesday.
This is because they may want to wait and see until the Moon Jae-in administration’s labor and welfare policies take shape.
Also, those enterprises are seemingly first looking into ways to change their irregular workers to regular employees in line with President Moon’s policy of promoting zero irregular public employees.
As the government further draws up its policy in detail, they are likely to hire fresh employees.
“Some enterprises with a small number of irregular workers have already changed all of their statuses to regulars. They can take the next step and increase hiring,” an industry source said.
“But those with a large number of irregular workers may take some time before they can change their status and expand their regular workforce.”
Since some have already increased their regular workforce through the change, they may set aside their additional hiring plans until after President Moon fully establishes his government with new labor, health, finance ministers and a prime minister.
“We have to regard the change of irregular workers into regulars as part of hiring. Some that have done this may not be able to offer jobs immediately because those positions have already been filled by existing workers who turned regulars,” another source said.
“Also, Korea does not yet have a government that can give further policy directions.”
The number of public enterprises that are looking to hire irregular employees came to 165 as of last week, down more than 20 percent from a year earlier, according to Job-Alio, a state job posting site run by the finance ministry.
This may be due to increasing burden for the enterprises to later change their irregular recruits to regular employees.
Economists say rather than clinging to increasing numbers for short-term effect, Korea needs to come up with a job policy that can generate quality growth in the labor market.
“Expanding the state regular workforce could bring positive effects to youth unemployment. But what is more important is a long-term policy that can help create a sustainable and virtuous cycle where lives can be enriched, values increased and more jobs created through such improvements in our labor market,” said Yoon Ja-young, an economist at Chungnam National University.