Large South Korean companies with 300 or more employees added 41,000 workers on permanent contracts this year, while fixed-term hires rose by more than 67,000, according to government data. The gap is expected to fuel calls for an overhaul of rules governing fixed-term employment as corporate hiring patterns shift.
The 4,205 companies subject to disclosure requirements employed a combined 5.918 million workers, up 91,000 from a year earlier, the Ministry of Employment and Labor said on Sept. 29 in its 2026 employment type disclosure results. Of those, 4.983 million were directly employed by the companies, an increase of 107,000.
Breaking down this year's gains by employment type, workers on contracts with no fixed end date — commonly referred to as permanent employees — totaled 3.57 million, up 41,000 from a year earlier. Fixed-term workers numbered 1.412 million, up 67,000. The increase in fixed-term workers was more than 1.6 times that of permanent employees. As a result, fixed-term workers accounted for 28.3% of directly employed staff, up 0.7 percentage points from a year earlier, while the share of permanent employees fell 0.7 percentage points to 71.7%.
By industry, health and welfare services added 44,000 workers, accounting for roughly half of the total increase. Within that sector, fixed-term hires rose by 29,000 and part-time workers by 20,000, driving the overall gain in fixed-term employment.
Workers not directly employed — including dispatched, outsourced and subcontracted labor — fell by 16,000 to 936,000. The decline reflected a drop of 16,000 in construction, where a downturn has curbed demand. In manufacturing, by contrast, the number of indirectly employed workers rose by 6,000 to 324,000. In shipbuilding, buoyed by a surge in orders, in-house subcontracting accounted for 64.6% of the workforce, up 1.6 percentage points from 63% a year earlier, leaving two of every three workers on site employed by subcontractors.
The shift toward fixed-term jobs has hardened into a structural trend over the past five years. From 2021 to 2026, permanent employees at companies with 300 or more workers rose by 409,000 to 3.57 million from 3.161 million, while fixed-term workers surged by 478,000 to 1.412 million from 934,000. Over those five years, the net increase in fixed-term workers exceeded that of permanent employees by about 70,000.
The share of permanent employees among directly employed staff has declined for five consecutive years, falling to 71.7% this year from 77.2% in 2021. The fixed-term share has risen every year, jumping 5.5 percentage points to 28.3% from 22.8% in 2021. Analysts attribute the change to the growing practice of rehiring skilled workers on fixed-term contracts after they reach retirement age, combined with voluntary demand for such arrangements.
With fixed-term workers approaching 30% of the workforce at large companies, pressure is building to revise the fixed-term employment law, which has remained unchanged for 20 years. The law requires employers to convert workers to open-ended contracts after two years, but critics say it has prompted companies to replace staff on two-year cycles rather than offer permanent positions. The ministry plans to draw up reform measures based on a survey of fixed-term employment conditions.
"It is a positive development that both the number and the share of workers directly employed by disclosing companies have increased," Labor Minister Kim Young-hoon said. "The government will support voluntary improvements in corporate hiring practices and work to ensure that workers do not face unreasonable discrimination based on their employment type."
