52% of Office Workers Say "Hiring Decreased After AI Introduction"... Workload Remains the Same or Has Increased

Workplace Gapjil 119 Survey

Growing Concerns Over Restructuring for Non-Regular and Low-Wage Workers

More than half of office workers feel that the scale of recruitment at their companies has decreased since the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) technology.

On the 28th, job seekers participating in the "2026 Korea Win-Win Job Fair" held at the aT Center in Seocho-gu, Seoul, are looking at the job posting board. 2026.4.28 Photo by Kang Jin-hyung

On May 3, the civic group Workplace Gapjil 119 announced the results of an online survey conducted by the polling agency Global Research from February 2 to 8, targeting 1,000 office workers aged 19 and older nationwide. The survey has a 95% confidence level and a margin of error of ±3.1 percentage points.

According to the survey results, 47.1% (471 people) of respondents said their workplace had officially adopted or was in the process of adopting technologies such as work-related chatbots or generative AI. When all respondents were asked whether recruitment had decreased after the introduction of AI, a majority of 52.4% (524 people) answered "yes," indicating a tangible sense of reduced hiring.

In particular, among the 471 people who responded that AI technology had been introduced, 23.8% said their company was undergoing or planning workforce reductions or restructuring. This positive response regarding restructuring was notably higher among non-regular workers earning less than KRW 1.5 million per month at companies with 300 or more employees.

Despite the atmosphere of reduced hiring, there was little or no change in the actual amount of work, and for some, the workload even increased. Among the 471 respondents working at companies where AI had been introduced, a majority (54.1%) said there was no impact on their workload, while 26.7% reported that their workload had actually increased.

Workplace Gapjil 119 pointed out, "With the introduction of AI, there is a possibility of restructuring focused on large workplaces such as call centers and customer service centers, where the proportion of low-wage and non-regular workers is high. The extra capacity secured by AI may be redirected to additional work tasks, which could actually increase labor intensity."

They added, "Although President Lee Jaemyung has mentioned alternatives such as AI basic income, this approach is more about compensating for the consequences of technological change after the fact, and does not address how to design the structure of work and employment following the adoption of such technology. The voices of workers must be sufficiently reflected from the very beginning of the policy design process related to AI."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.