Job changes in South Korea's semiconductor industry are shrinking sharply as major chipmakers including Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) and SK hynix (000660.KS) post record earnings. Improved business conditions and larger performance bonuses are keeping more workers at their current employers, while corporate demand for staff is rising, deepening a hiring crunch.
An analysis of job-move data held by Remember & Company showed that the number of people who changed jobs in the semiconductor industry in the first half of this year fell about 50% from a year earlier, the company said on the 18th. Compared with the first half of 2023, three years ago, the figure has dropped to about one-third.
Job moves in the chip industry have been declining for several years. The number fell about 17% in 2023 from a year earlier, and dropped about 14% in 2024 and 30% in 2025. In the first half of this year, the decline widened to about 50%, indicating a further contraction in labor mobility.
Analysts attribute the trend to a "locking" effect, in which employees stay put as the chip industry's business conditions improve. With earnings rising at major chipmakers such as Samsung Electronics and SK hynix, current employees are valuing the compensation available at their existing workplaces more highly than the expected gains from moving. "Companies looking for recruits also want talent from large firms, but employees at those firms have little incentive to leave," an official at Remember said. "This trend is likely to continue for the next several years."
Hiring demand in the chip industry, by contrast, is growing. Job postings for entry-level positions in the semiconductor sector surged 47% in the first half of this year from the same period a year earlier, according to JobKorea. Entry-level roles accounted for 12.2% of all semiconductor job postings, up 2.4 percentage points from a year earlier and the highest level in five years. The overall increase in semiconductor job postings, covering both entry-level and experienced positions, was 20%, outpacing the 14% average across all sectors.
As hiring demand grows, securing experienced workers is becoming harder. Data on headhunting requests for semiconductor talent at Remember showed that 83.6% of positions left unfilled last year were put out for headhunting again in the first half of this year. Among the companies making repeat requests, 35% had failed to fill the roles for two years or more. As labor mobility declines, corporate hiring gaps are stretching out.
That stands in contrast with the expanding overall workforce in the semiconductor industry. The number of industrial technology workers in the sector stood at 118,721 as of the end of 2024, up 4.3% from a year earlier, according to a 2025 survey on industrial technology workforce supply and demand by the Ministry of Trade and Industry. Employment is rising along with industry growth, but movement of existing workers between employers is contracting.
If the pattern persists, there are concerns that small and medium-sized enterprises and startups, which are less competitive than large firms on wages and benefits, could face a heavier burden in securing talent. In particular, with movement of experienced workers constrained, the gap in labor supply between companies of different sizes could widen further.
"The semiconductor boom is an exceptional situation, so there is an unavoidable element to large firms absorbing the workforce," said Kim Sung-hee, a professor at Korea University's Graduate School of Labor Studies. "Smaller companies will need to improve their compensation systems and put incentives in place to attract talent if they are to narrow the gap in competing for workers with large firms."