About half of the employees at small and medium-sized companies who are taking time off from work are doing so due to business deterioration amid the COVID-19 pandemic, statistics showed Monday.

According to the Korea Small Business Institute and Statistics Korea, among the 712,000 employees at small and medium-sized enterprises who were on temporary leave as of September, 50.1 percent, or 357,000, had taken leave due to a business slump or company shutdown.

Small and medium-sized companies have fewer than 300 workers, the national statistics agency said.

In the survey, smaller businesses with fewer than four employees proportionally had more workers on temporary leave. The figure was 154,000, or 58.3 percent of all employees on temporary leave. For companies with fewer than 300 workers, the figure was 202,000 workers or 45.1 percent.

At companies with more than 300 employees, 8,000 of the 76,000 on temporary leave had been relieved of their duties because of a business slump, the statistics showed.

The data shows a stark contrast from the situation a year earlier, when 43,000 employees at small and medium-sized companies were taking temporary leave due to a business slump, making up 14.1 percent of the total.

The statistics agency attributed the increase in the number of employees on temporary leave to the COVID-19 pandemic, as many business areas were hit hard by the social distancing measures, such as accommodations, food and sales.

(khnews@heraldcorp.com)