JobKorea HR Survey: 78.7% Have Second-Half Hiring Plans… Of Those, 79% Plan '10 or Fewer', Catch Data Shows Regular Job Posting Share Fell from 71% to 50% Over Two Years, KCCI Survey Finds Entry-Level Only Postings at 2.6%

As of August 12, ahead of the opening of the second-half open recruitment season, major domestic recruitment platforms such as Saramin and JobKorea post thousands of new job listings every day. However, it is difficult to tell just from the home screen which companies are posting them, under what employment types, and for what experience levels and job roles. Because neither platform publicly discloses real-time statistics breaking down all posted listings by company size, this publication has reconstructed the trends of the recruitment market by cross-referencing recently released official platform data reports and HR surveys from JobKorea, data compiled and analyzed by Jinhaksa Catch from listings posted on its platform, corporate surveys conducted separately by the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI), the Korea Enterprises Federation (KEF), and Wantedlab, and official labor market statistics from the Ministry of Employment and Labor and the National Statistics Office. However, we must first clarify that these figures are the results of tabulations and surveys conducted by each institution targeting listings posted on their respective platforms or their own samples, and do not constitute a complete census covering the entire domestic recruitment market. Nevertheless, the trend appearing commonly across multiple surveys is clear. While the door to hiring has not closed entirely, signals are confirmed in most surveys that the conditions for those who can pass through that door are becoming narrower and more precise than before.

What Scale of Companies Are Hiring… "Company-Wide Hiring 17.6%, Department-Level Replacements 61.2%"

According to the '2026 Second-Half Recruitment Trends' announced on August 10 by JobKorea (operating company Workspire) based on a survey of 569 corporate HR managers conducted from July 14 to 31, 78.7% of responding companies answered that they have hiring plans for the second half of the year, showing little difference from 78.3% in last year's survey, but the content has clearly turned conservative. Companies planning company-wide recruitment accounted for a mere 17.6%, whereas department- or job-role-level partial replacements were overwhelming at 61.2%, and companies citing '10 or fewer' as their scheduled second-half hiring headcount reached 78.9%, an increase of 18.4 percentage points from the previous year's survey. Conversely, companies intending to hire 11 to 30 people stood at 8.6%, and those planning large-scale recruitment of 101 or more people accounted for a mere 2.8%, down 10.2 percentage points and 4.5 percentage points, respectively. Companies setting their recruitment budget at less than 3 million won surged by 37.5 percentage points year-on-year to 74.3%, and responses stating they would not execute any separate budget stood at 22.8%. Regarding recruitment timing, responses for 'ad-hoc recruitment'—hiring whenever needed throughout the second half rather than during specific open recruitment seasons—were the highest at 42.6%, followed by July to September at 29.2% and October to December at 17.4%. JobKorea defined this trend of filling small headcounts through year-round ad-hoc hiring as 'long-tail hiring,' explaining that while the proportion of companies intending to hire is similar to last year, the scale and executed budget have clearly decreased, meaning that matching efficiency—accurately connecting applicants and job roles—will dictate performance.

The situation among large conglomerates is revealed even more clearly in an analysis conducted by Catch targeting job listings posted on its platform. According to the 2024–2026 first-half job posting analysis released on July 14 by Catch, a recruitment platform operated by Jinhaksa (based on postings on Catch), total job listings plummeted by 49% over two years, from 43,953 in the first half of 2024 to 22,438 in the first half of this year. Postings from large and medium-sized enterprises favored by job seekers also halved from 33,048 to 16,523, with large enterprises dropping by 47% and medium-sized enterprises by 53%, showing that the hiring gate has narrowed regardless of company size. In an analysis previously released by Catch last December, regular full-time entry-level job postings at large enterprises for January to November 2025 dropped sharply by 43% to 2,145 compared to 3,741 the previous year. Government statistics point in the same direction. According to the '2026 First-Half Establishment Labor Survey by Occupation' announced by the Ministry of Employment and Labor on June 30, the number of planned hires for the second and third quarters of this year stood at 460,000, down 1.8% year-on-year and the lowest since the first-half survey in 2021 during the COVID-19 period. The unfilled vacancy rate for workplaces with fewer than 300 employees was 6.6%, higher than the 6.1% for workplaces with 300 or more employees, suggesting that hiring demand to fill actual vacancies remains relatively high in small and medium-sized workplaces.

Reorganization of Employment Types (Based on Catch Data)… Regular Job Posting Share Drops from 71% to 50%

Based on listings compiled by Catch, the composition by employment type has changed even more dramatically. According to Catch's analysis, regular full-time job postings dropped by 64% over two years from 31,413 in the first half of 2024 to 19,796 in the first half of 2025 and 11,258 in the first half of this year, with regular positions' share of total listings falling from 71% to 57% and down to 50% over the same period. Within regular positions, entry-level postings fell 56% from 5,753 to 2,500, and experienced-hire postings fell 64% from 21,625 to 7,704, contracting across both entry-level and experienced tiers. On the other hand, the share of contract worker postings rose by 9 percentage points from 25% to 34%, the share of intern postings rose by 4 percentage points from 7% to 11%, and trainee postings expanded more than fourfold from 21 to 93, expanding their share from 0.05% to 0.41%. Kim Jung-hyun, head of Jinhaksa Catch, diagnosed that as companies approach hiring cautiously overall—with significant drops not only in regular entry-level positions but also in experienced hires—job seekers need to build practical work experience through diverse pathways such as internships, trainee programs, field training, and employment-linked courses rather than waiting solely for open recruitment.

Job Title and Experience Year Landscape: Entry-Level Only Postings at 2.6%, Most Frequently Chosen Focused Hiring Seniority is '4 to 7 Years'

The experience-centered reorganization is confirmed by figures. In a survey titled 'Characteristics and Implications of the First-Half Recruitment Market' announced by the KCCI in June of last year, out of 144,181 first-half postings uploaded to private recruitment platforms, 82.0% were for experienced hires only, and 15.4% sought both entry-level and experienced candidates, whereas purely entry-level only postings accounted for a mere 2.6%. Furthermore, in a second-half recruitment trend survey subsequently conducted by the KCCI targeting HR managers at over 500 companies, companies favoring experienced hires the most significantly outpaced those favoring entry-level applicants, recording 51.0% compared to 10.3%. Then, what is the 'seniority' of experience desired by companies? In the '2026 Recruitment Trend Survey' conducted by Wantedlab last December targeting HR managers at 153 domestic companies, the seniority companies responded they would hire most intensively was 4 to 7 years at 49.7%, followed by 1 to 3 years at 19.6%, 8 to 11 years at 17.6%, entry-level at 12.4%, and 12 to 15 years at 0.7%. This is interpreted to mean that assistant manager to manager-level working-level staff, who can be immediately deployed to practical tasks while keeping labor cost burdens manageable, are the primary target for intensive hiring selected by the companies responding to this survey. In the same survey, job-specific professional competency was chosen first as the top priority for talent criteria in 2026 at 64.7%, and AI and data utilization competency ranked fourth at 24.2%, demonstrating that verified practical skills and AI utilization capabilities, along with years of experience, have established themselves as core yardsticks for hiring. The concentration on experienced hires is also becoming a boomerang for companies; the fact that in the Ministry of Employment and Labor's survey, the reason cited most frequently for unfilled vacancies in the first quarter of this year—at 25.8%—was that there were no applicants possessing the experience demanded by businesses reveals the paradox that in a market where everyone seeks experienced personnel, it is increasingly difficult to actually find experienced workers who meet the criteria. The '2026 New Recruitment Actual Condition Survey' conducted by the KF early this year targeting 500 companies with 100 or more employees showed that 54.8% of companies conduct only ad-hoc recruitment, and 67.6% selected job-related work experience as the most important evaluation factor during new recruitment, demonstrating that traditional recruitment grammar centered on regular open recruitment and potential-based selection is virtually dissolving.

Which Job Roles Are They Hiring For… Sales Highest, HR Surges, Only AI and Development Postings Decrease

The platform data report released by JobKorea on July 3 is the most recent data showing the landscape by job role, based strictly on listings posted on the JobKorea platform. According to this, while total job postings on the JobKorea platform in the first half of 2026 increased by 10% compared to the same period last year, sales maintained the largest posting scale by major job classification and grew by 2%; human resources/HR increased by 12%, planning/strategy by 9%, marketing/advertising/MD by 7%, and legal/admin/general affairs by 5%, with most job roles growing. On the other hand, AI/development/data decreased by 4%, becoming the only category among major job roles to decline. JobKorea analyzed that this decrease—which fell to about half the level compared to 2023—is not a contraction in AI demand itself, but rather the result of a structural change where large-scale developer open recruitments have faded and ad-hoc small-scale hiring, which fills positions immediately upon vacancies, has taken root, reducing the total volume of postings, while the absolute scale still ranks in the overall top tier. However, since separate quantitative data supporting this cause of the decline was not released alongside it, it is necessary to take into account that this is interpretation by JobKorea itself. Moving down to sub-classifications, online marketers, corporate planning, MDs, and marketing planning ranked in the upper tiers, keeping demand for marketing-related job roles broadly alive, while on the development side, web developers (29th), IT/technical sales (30th), R&D/researchers (36th), and software developers (39th) made it into the overall TOP 50. Meanwhile, the KEF survey cited manufacturing/field/skilled jobs (44.8%) and R&D (34.2%) as job categories requiring urgent new hiring, while the Ministry of Employment and Labor survey showed clear increases in job openings and hiring in health and social welfare, construction, business facility management industries, and care service occupations, confirming a dual structure where office-job-centric platform posting landscapes coexist with field labor shortages.

What Today's Employment Trends Say… Youth Unemployment Rate at 6.8%, Largest Rise in 5 Years and 6 Months

Microscopic changes appearing in job posting data show signals in the same direction as the macroeconomic indicators of the 'July 2026 Employment Trends' announced by the National Statistics Office on the morning of the 12th. Employed persons in July stood at 29,136,000, up 108,000 from a year earlier, recovering the 100,000-person increase range for the first time in four months. However, the employment rate for those aged 15 and older fell 63.3%, declining for the fourth consecutive month; youth employment for those aged 15 to 29 dropped by 191,000, continuing a decline for the 45th consecutive month; and the youth unemployment rate jumped 1.3 percentage points to 6.8%, marking the largest increase since January 2021, 5 years and 6 months ago. By industry, manufacturing employment fell by 68,000 to continue a decline for the 22nd consecutive month, and construction employment fell by 57,000 for the 27th consecutive month. Hyun-jun Byun, Director General for Social Statistics at the National Statistics Office, explained that the increase in job-seeking activities among youth due to civil service exams and the expansion of public-sector recruitment during the surveyed period influenced the rise in the unemployment rate. However, corporate talent demand itself has not disappeared; according to employment administration statistics for July announced by the Ministry of Employment and Labor on the 10th, new job openings on Work24 rose 7.8% year-on-year to 177,000, and the job opening-to-applicant ratio representing the number of jobs per job seeker also rose to 0.44 from 0.40 in the same month last year. Various indicators commonly suggest that the 'nature' of hiring is changing rather than its absolute volume, and it is also possible to interpret that these changes may have a relatively greater impact on youth entering the labor market and job seekers hoping for regular employment.

Second-Half Outlook: Posting Volume Could Reach Record High, But the Gate May Still Be Narrow

What is interesting is the possibility that the volume of postings itself in the second half may increase. According to JobKorea's data report, second-half postings decreased by 26% and 12% compared to the first half in 2023 and 2024, respectively, but in 2025, for the first time, second-half postings exceeded the first half by 3%, a reversal. If this pattern is maintained, the possibility is raised that second-half posting volume this year based on JobKorea platform data could reach a record-high level. However, this is merely an estimation based on past patterns, and even if posting volume increases, its composition is likely to move within the framework we confirmed earlier: small-scale hiring of 10 or fewer people, experienced- and ad-hoc-centric hiring, and an expanded proportion of contract workers and interns. As for the background of these changes, investigative institutions share the view that complex factors are cited together—such as economic uncertainty, labor cost burdens, shifts in workforce management methods following AI adoption, and the movement of hiring methods from open recruitment to ad-hoc recruitment—and it is difficult to explain them through any single factor alone. The fact that 80.8% of companies in this JobKorea survey reported utilizing AI for hiring tasks, a sharp increase of 46.6 percentage points over a year, shows the possibility that the expansion of AI utilization will lead to automation and advanced analysis of the recruitment process. Ahead of the open recruitment season for large conglomerates and financial institutions concentrated from late August through September, it has become more important than ever for job seekers to read the conditions of postings they can pass rather than the total volume of postings, and for companies to secure matching capabilities to accurately find necessary talent with a reduced budget.