Korea’s National Pension Service’s (NPS) investment arm is facing staff shortages, with the number of its employees falling 12.7% short of the annual quota, according to The Korea Economic Daily.
The local financial newspaper quoted data from the country’s Rebuilding Korea Party, which reported that NPS Investment Management, the investment unit of NPS, had 362 staff at the end of June, below its 415 annual job quota.
Data from the political party includes that the unfilled job rate is the highest since 2017, when NPS relocated its headquarters from Seoul to Jeonju, 240 kilometres south from the capital. The investment unit’s understaffing was 49 in 2022 and 28 in 2023, according to the report.
The remote location of the new headquarters and lower salaries compared to private investment firms were the major reasons for the labour shortage. In 2017, NPS Investment Management failed to recruit 34 employees, more than double the unmet need in 2015, when 15 jobs went unfilled, the report says.
The relocation is also said to have triggered “brain drain”. Reuters previously reported that close to 140 portfolio managers had left NPS between 2016 and 2021 as they found the distance between Seoul and Jeonju inconvenient.
NPS, the world’s third largest pension fund, had around 1,147 trillion won (US$860 billion) of assets under management as of June 30.