South Korea’s corporate hiring is expected to grow at a slower pace in 2012 compared to the year before, mainly due to concerns of sluggish economic growth, a poll by a local business federation showed Sunday.

The nationwide poll carried out on 508 companies by the Korea Employers Federation showed annual hiring is expected to rise 3.3 percent, down from a gain of 3.7 percent tallied for last year.

It said large companies with over 1,000 employees plan to increase hiring by 3.7 percent this year, down 0.4 percentage points from 2011. Numbers for medium-sized companies with 300-999 workers fell 1.2 percentage points to 2.7 percent. Hiring figures for businesses with less than 300 workers, however, moved up 1.7 percentage points to 2.4 percent.

“Persistent eurozone woes that are affecting trade, and concerns surrounding political parties pledging unrealistic benefits ahead of the presidential race have raised worries for companies,” the KEF claimed. It said the decrease in hiring growth reflects such concerns.

The central bank recently lowered South Korea’s growth estimate for this year from 3.7 percent to 3.5 percent. This is lower than the 3.6 percent growth reported for 2011 and 6.2 percent reached a year earlier.

Despite the general drop in hiring growth, the federation said local companies still plan to increase new positions for high school graduates.

“Polls showed businesses planning to hire 5.2 percent more high school graduates this year vis-a-vis 2011,” the KEF said.

In 2011, the hiring of high school graduates rose just 2.3 percent on-year.

The latest report, in particular, showed hiring of people with high school diplomas among the country’s large companies is predicted to surge 6.9 percent compared to the year before.

“The increase is testament to how big companies are responding to calls by the general public and government to hire more high school graduates into their workforce,” the federation said.

This is much higher than hiring growth forecasts for medium and smaller sized companies that stood at 2.4 percent and 2.9 percent, respectively.

The report, meanwhile, estimated the hiring of college graduates among big companies to decrease this year.

Of all people to be hired, companies polled said 77.7 percent will be new recruits, with the remainder to be workers with prior experience in other companies. 

(Yonhap News)