Workers from SMEs still lag behind those in larger firms, according to new report
More men working in South Korea are taking parental leave but the number of those in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are still lower than those in larger firms, a study by the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs (KIHASA) found.
In its report titled “Improving Blind Spots in the Parental Leave System,” KIHASA revealed that 295,697 workers took parental leave in 2023, with 126,029 of them being first-time users of the benefit. The number did not include workers who took a parental leave multiple times in one year.
About 24.2% of those who took parental leave were men, which was a total of 71,571 workers. This was a significant increase from the 13.4% recorded in 2018, revealing a steady growth in the number of men who were taking time off to take care of their children.
Despite this notable growth, only 43.3% of the workers who took the leave were from SMEs that had less than 300 employees. Meanwhile, 56.7% of the men who took parental leave were from companies that had 300 or more employees, marking a gap that continued to widen between firms of different sizes.
In 2018, the number of men from large companies who took parental leave took was at 16.1% while those from SMEs were at 10.6%. While the former rose by 14.4 percentage points, the latter only increased by 8.4 percentage points.
This marked the ongoing challenges of employees from SMEs when it comes to availing parental leave. In several online forums which housed communities about parenting, many users shared their struggles in workplace pressure and job insecurity. There were many men who expressed their concerns in losing their roles once they came back to work.
The researchers underlined the need for developing methods to encourage more men who worked in SMEs to use their parental leave benefit.
To gather its data, researches from KIHASA analyzed the Ministry of Employment and Labor’s employment administration statistics and published their findings in the report.
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