Venture Company Workers Outnumber Conglomerate Staff

Published on 2018/12/30 | Source

Executives and staff at Korean venture companies last year finally outnumbered staff at the country's top five conglomerates, according to a survey released Thursday by the Ministry of SMEs and Start-ups.

An estimated 762,000 people worked for the country's 35,187 venture companies, up 4.3 percent from 731,392 in 2016, the survey said, while Samsung, LG, Hyundai, Lotte and SK employed 756,000 people.

The average venture company had 21.7 employees.

A spokesman for the Korea Venture Business Association said, "The size of staff in struggling big industries like shipbuilding has fallen, but venture companies balanced things out to stabilize overall employment".

Venture companies posted a combined sales of W225.2 trillion last year, second only to Samsung (W258 trillion), thanks to a boom in semiconductors.

Their average operating profit rose 2.6 percent on-year to W267 million, though they suffered an 8.9 percent drop in net profit to W160 million.