Large South Korean companies added about 41,000 directly hired permanent employees this year, while fixed-term workers increased by nearly 70,000. The widening gap shows that hiring growth at big companies is being driven by fixed-term contracts, which is likely to amplify calls to overhaul the fixed-term employment system to match a changed labor market.
According to the 2026 employment type disclosure results released by the Ministry of Employment and Labor on the 29th, the 4,205 companies subject to disclosure — those with 300 or more full-time workers — reported a combined 5.918 million workers, up 91,000 from a year earlier. Of those, directly employed in-house workers totaled 4.983 million, an increase of 107,000.
Fixed-term contracts led the growth. Workers on contracts with no set end date, generally regarded as permanent employees, numbered 3.57 million, up 41,000 from a year earlier, while fixed-term workers rose 67,000 to 1.412 million. As a result, fixed-term workers accounted for 28.3% of in-house employees, up 0.7 percentage points, while the share of permanent employees fell by the same margin to 71.7%.
By industry, health and welfare services added 44,000 workers, about half of the overall increase. Within that sector, fixed-term workers rose by 29,000 and part-time workers by 20,000.
By contrast, outside workers — those dispatched, contracted out or subcontracted — fell 16,000 to 936,000. The decline reflected a drop of 16,000 outside workers in construction amid the industry's downturn. In manufacturing, outside workers instead rose 6,000 to 324,000. In shipbuilding, the share of in-house subcontracted labor climbed 1.6 percentage points from a year earlier to 64.6%, leaving a structure in which roughly two of every three workers on site are subcontracted.
The expansion of fixed-term employment has continued for five years. From 2021 to this year, permanent employees rose 409,000 to 3.57 million from 3.161 million, while fixed-term workers surged 478,000 to 1.412 million from 934,000. The share of permanent employees fell to 71.7% from 77.2% over the same period, while the fixed-term share climbed to 28.3% from 22.8%. Analysts attribute the shift in part to a growing number of cases in which skilled workers who reach retirement age are rehired on fixed-term contracts, along with stronger corporate demand for flexible staffing in response to shifting business conditions.
With the fixed-term share approaching 30%, some argue that the fixed-term employment law, whose basic framework has remained in place for 20 years, needs to be revised. The current law requires employers to convert workers to open-ended contracts after two years, but critics say that in practice it can lead to employment gaps, with companies replacing workers around the two-year mark rather than converting them to permanent status. A ministry official said the government plans to draw up measures to improve the system based on a survey of fixed-term employment conditions.
