Worker satisfaction has broadly declined at South Korean companies, but the sense of happiness varies sharply between firms even within the same industry, a new survey showed. In the semiconductor sector, SK hynix (000660.KS) ranked in the top 3% of companies while Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) landed only in the top 60%, and among internet platform companies the gap between Naver (035420.KS) and Kakao (035720.KS) widened even further.
Worker happiness falls as fewer firms clear 50 points
Only about 100 companies posted higher happiness scores than a year earlier, while more than 370 saw their scores fall, according to the 2026 Blind Index released on the 12th by Blind, a workplace platform. The share of companies scoring 50 points or higher also fell to 33% this year from 47% a year earlier.
Korea Gas Corporation topped the company rankings with 85 points. SAP Korea and Korea South-East Power followed with 82 points each, Google Korea with 80 points and Korea Housing Finance Corporation with 79 points.
By occupation, lawyers scored highest at 54 points, followed by medical professionals at 51 points and doctors at 50 points. Hardware engineers, who handle work such as semiconductor and circuit design, entered the upper ranks for the first time with 49 points. By contrast, planners scored 36 points, career military personnel 37 points and customer service workers 40 points, among the lowest levels.
The Blind Index, developed jointly with the Korea Labor Institute, measures the happiness employees feel at their companies across 15 categories including work, relationships and culture. The latest survey drew 34,372 workers who completed employment verification between July and December last year.
SK hynix in top 3%, Samsung in top 60%, Kakao at 93%
The gaps were wide even within a single industry. In the semiconductor sector, SK hynix was in the top 3% of all companies, while Samsung Electronics landed only around the top 60%.
The difference was even more pronounced among internet platform companies. Naver ranked in the top 2%, while Kakao slid to the top 93% this year from the top 46% a year earlier.
Notably, moves to change jobs also declined even as workplace happiness fell. The share of workers who had tried to change jobs over the past year dropped from the previous year, and the trend was not confined to any particular industry or occupation.
Shin Jae-yong, a professor at Seoul National University's business school, told Newsis that the current drop in job changes reflects not satisfaction but a wait-and-see stance in a shrinking labor market. "An organization whose members stay physically but have checked out mentally loses its vitality," the professor said.
At happier firms, more talk of changing the company than quitting
Differences also showed up in conversations within organizations. Blind analyzed 218,000 posts on the public channels of employees at companies ranked at the top and bottom of the index and found that discussions of labor unions, performance-based pay, salaries and strikes were more active at companies with higher happiness scores.
In particular, at the top-ranked firms, questions aimed at improving the organization outnumbered those premised on leaving the company by 1.8 times.
Jeon Yu-jeong, head of business at Team Blind, said happiness is an outcome while conversation is a symptom, explaining that watching the language and behavior members leave every day can help detect changes in attrition rates and organizational reputation in advance.
