According to a survey conducted by the Federation of Korean Mid-sized Enterprises from November 18 to December 2 last year, targeting 800 mid-sized companies, 40.6% of the surveyed companies responded that they have not set any new hiring plans for this year. The results were announced on the 14th.

Those who responded that they "have new hiring plans" accounted for 59.4%. Among them, 52.6% said they would "maintain the same level of new hiring as the previous year," and 25.9% said the hiring scale would "decrease."

Mid-sized companies that responded to reducing the scale of new hiring cited "worsening performance and declining demand" (40.7%), "cost reduction" (30.1%), and "concerns about economic downturn" (15.4%) as the main reasons.

The percentage of mid-sized companies that responded to expanding hiring this year was 21.5%, which is a 9.7 percentage point decrease compared to the forecast in July last year, according to the federation.

Lee Ho-jun, executive vice chairman of the federation, urged, "We need to ensure that the extreme internal and external instability does not completely extinguish the spark of economic recovery and alleviate the concerns of young people about the employment contraction of not only mid-sized companies but also the entire industry. It is urgent to proactively implement a policy package to strengthen mid-sized companies' hiring capacity, such as expanding tax support, including income tax reductions for employed people, and substantializing youth employment support programs."