VOL.69/2024.04

 

Current Employment Status in the Korean Publication Industry

 

2022.12.05

 

The “2020 Content Industry Statistics (2022.3.)” report published by the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism provides various statistics from the status survey conducted in 2021 on the overall content industry. With the latest statistics available today, it is the only document that shows the current situation of the publishing industry in figures, including statistics about the Korean publishing industry.

 

About 185,000 people are employed throughout the publishing industry, including newspapers and printing

 

The report shows that the number of employees in the publishing industry reached 185,444 in 2020, which is a 0.5% increase from 184,554 in 2018. This figure covers all publishing-related fields, such as publishing, printing, wholesaling, retailing, online distribution, and renting. To look at the publishing industry in more detail, this number includes various sub-industries, including the paper book publishing sector, such as general book publishing, textbook publishing, and educational supplements, and the online publishing sector, such as online/mobile e-book publishing, newspaper publishing, magazine and periodical publishing, and others. In short, the number 185,444 covers all the “publishing” fields we can think of when referring to the general publishing industry, encompassing not only paper books but also e-books, magazines, newspapers, and other publications.
As I have mentioned above, from a microscopic view, Korea divides the publishing industry into two – general book publishing and textbook/educational supplement publishing. This is because education takes a significant proportion – more than half - in the entire publishing market, ranging from textbooks for elementary, middle, and high school students, to textbook supplements, exercise books linked to textbooks, and learning materials for preschoolers. In this article, I will refer to this area as “educational publishing,” and neither academic textbooks nor technical books are included. So it's basically textbooks for elementary, middle, and high school students, and learning materials for children. Other various publishing fields will be classified as “general book publishing.” Also, as the online/mobile e-book publishing sector mainly refers to e-publications, it will be classified as “e-publishing” in this article.

 

 

Around 65,000 employees work in publishing houses, e-book publishers, magazine publishers, and bookstores

 

Based on this classification, the number of people working in the publishing industry counted as of 2020 was 9,846 for general book publishing, 15,243 for educational publishing, 2,495 for e-publishing, 10,581 for magazine publishing, 53,557 for printing, and 26,830 for bookstore businesses. Compared to the figures from two years ago (2018), the size is roughly the same, while e-publishing saw a slight increase and educational publishing lost some. Such changes are interpreted to have been driven by the changing social conditions - the decline in the birth rate affecting the school-age population and the evolution of the media sector affecting e-publishing.
Furthermore, although the publishing industry was hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the employment status has remained almost the same. This implies that the negative impact of the virus has not been equally critical in the industry. The 2021 Publishing Industry Survey (as of 2020) announced by the Publication Industry Promotion Agency of Korea (KPIPA) in June this year reports that publishers that “maintained” the number of employees compared to the previous year accounted for 89.1% in 2020. Publishers who saw an “increase” were primarily those with over 50 employees, accounting for 4.9%. Meanwhile, publishers who experienced a “decrease” in the number were mainly in the educational publishing sector, accounting for 6.0%. In short, it seems that the pandemic has had a different impact on publishing – some have been only windblown, and others have been swept away by a storm.

 

 

Meanwhile, if we look at the regional distribution of employees in the publishing industry as of 2020, Seoul was the most popular region accounting for 51.1% with 79,122 employees, which is a 0.1% increase on year. The region also experienced a 1.6% average annual increase from 2018 to 2020. In terms of general book publishing and educational publishing, the metropolitan area including Seoul (5,273 in general book publishing and 9,368 in educational publishing), Gyeonggi-do Province (2,410 and 4,275 respectively), and Incheon (268 and 477 respectively) took up more than 80% of the entire number. While it is true that the metropolitan area with Seoul in the center is dense in population with focused economic productivity, you can see that the publishing industry has also followed the demographic characteristic with a majority of employees working in the region.
Let’s move on to the current employment status based on employment types. The number of regular workers in the overall publishing industry was 144,526, which is 93.3% of the entire workforce. Non-regular workers accounted for 6.3% with 9,749 people, and dispatched workers took up 0.4% with 633 people. By publishing fields, the general book publishing sector is composed of 4,175 males and 5,356 females as regular workers, and 162 males and 152 females as non-regular workers. Regular workers were the majority, and females accounted for a slightly bigger proportion than males with 56%, while males took up 44%. Meanwhile, the educational publishing sector composed of 7,472 males and 6,900 females as regular workers, and 415 males and 448 females as non-regular workers, showing a similar trend as the general book publishing sector; regular workers accounted for the majority, and males taking up 52% of the proportion, slightly more than females (48%).
Moving on to the magazine publishing sector – the workforce comprised 5,473 males and 4,281 females as regular workers, and 570 males and 189 females as non-regular workers. The regular workers accounted for 93% of the overall workforce. For gender ratio, there were more males (57%) than females (43%). Next, the bookstore sector comprises 11,297 males and 13,766 females as regular workers, 789 males, and 818 females as non-regular workers, and 98 males and 63 females as dispatched workers. Regular workers accounted for most of the workforce, like other sectors. Regarding the gender ratio, there were more females (56%) than males (44%) in this sector.

 

Editing and production account for almost half of the entire workforce in the publishing industry

 

Looking at the employment status based on work types, the “production” field was hiring the most significant number of employees, taking up 42.6% of the overall workers in the publishing industry. The general book publishing sector had 4,553 employees, including editors accounting for 46% of the population, followed by 1,945 in management (20%), and 1,275 in business planning (13%). For the educational publishing sector that had the greatest number of workers by field, 6,806 were in production (45%), 2,663 in management (17%), and 2,026 in others (such as distribution) (13%). From the overall viewpoint, the marketing and promotion fields have been continuously hiring more people, which implies that publishing houses’ efforts to outperform in the sales competition are focused on marketing.
In reference, the 2021 Publishing Industry Survey (as of 2020) announced in June this year by KPIPA reports that the average proportion of publishing houses using outsourcing for proofreading, correction, and editing was 28.2%. This means the industry has relied on a great deal of outside labor.

 

 

As for the distribution of employees in the publishing industry according to level of education, four-year university graduates represented 56.7%, followed by 22.7% of high school graduates or less, 17.3% of two-year college graduates, and 3.3% of post-graduate graduates. Again, however, the proportion varied between fields and types of work.
As for the composition of employees in the publishing industry by age, those in their 20s accounted for 23.2%, followed by those in their 30s 49.5%, which was the largest proportion. Those in their 40s accounted for 12.9%, and those in their 50s or above covered 14.4%. The general book publishing sector consisted of 1,906 people in their 20s, 4,584 in their 30s, 1,462 in their 40s, and 1,893 in their 50s and over. The educational publishing sector consisted of 3,175 in their 20s, 8,753 in their 30s, 2,316 in their 40s, and 998 in their 50s or above. The e-publishing sector composed of 552 in their 20s, 1,429 in their 30s, 363 in their 40s, and 152 in their 50s or above, while the magazine publishing sector consisted of 2,014 in their 20s, 5,421 in their 30s, 1,697 in their 40s, and 1,449 in their 50s or above. The common characteristic was that people in their 30s accounted for the largest proportion, and the number of employees clearly decreased with age. This can be interpreted that there are many cases in which people transfer to other industries, as the publishing industry tends to give less wage or provide poorer welfare than the average, and that new businesses set up by experienced workers that left the industry mostly tend to hire people in their 20s and 30s.

 

 

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Written by Baek Won-Keun (President of the Books & Society Research Institute)