Companies Want to Hire, Korea's Youth Don't Want to Go

Opening

Dear reader, after the conglomerate CEO meeting held at Cheongwadae (the Blue House, Korea’s presidential office) on February 4, the news headlines all led with the same number: 51,600 new hires. Samsung, SK, Hyundai Motor, LG, POSCO, Hanwha — Korea’s top 10 conglomerates all announced large-scale hiring plans for this year. Of that total, 66%, about 34,200 people, are slated to be entry-level hires.

Looking at the numbers alone, this is remarkable news. But when I read it, one question came to mind first: companies abroad are cutting people — why is Korea alone hiring more? And is this hiring really the kind of job young people want?

Today, I want to unpack the structural mismatch hidden behind these numbers, centered on these two questions.

Global Layoffs, Korean Hiring — What Explains the Gap?

Right now, global companies are moving in the opposite direction from Korea. According to analysis by RationalFX and various employment-tracking organizations, roughly 245,000 layoffs were announced across global tech companies in 2025 alone. US companies accounted for about 70% of that total. Intel cut about 34,000 jobs, Amazon about 20,000, and Microsoft about 17,000.

More recently, Jack Dorsey’s Block cut 4,000 employees — 40% of its entire workforce — in one stroke, and named the reason explicitly as AI. The logic: “a much smaller team can accomplish more with AI tools.”

Against this backdrop, Korean conglomerates hiring more than 50,000 new employees? Honestly, my first reaction was pure curiosity — why? Sure, it’s a positive signal. But look a little closer at the substance of this hiring, and you’ll see the gap with the global trend isn’t just a difference in direction — it’s a difference in the very nature of the hiring itself.

Here’s the core point: a significant portion of this large-scale hiring is tied to regional, physical construction projects — building semiconductor fabs, breaking ground on battery mass-production facilities, building out data center infrastructure. These aren’t white-collar office jobs; many are on-site positions running equipment and managing production processes.