In Korea, bigger employers pay more — and the pension data shows it rising at every single step.

Of all the ways to sort the Korean workforce, firm size gives the cleanest line. Bigger pays more, and it does so without a single exception across the size ladder.

What the data shows

The measure is the national-pension bill per enrolled worker — a proxy for pay, not the wage itself, and one that flattens at the top because the pension has a contribution ceiling. Ranked by how many people each workplace enrols, the per-head bill goes:

• 2–4 workers — 291,760 won.
• 5–9 — 306,693.
• 10–29 — 307,047.
• 30–49 — 330,483.
• 50–99 — 343,914.
• 100–299 — 370,148.
• 300–999 — 404,648.
• 1,000+ — 456,315 won.

Every step up in size is a step up in pay. There is no band where getting bigger stops paying more. From the smallest firms to the largest, the ratio is 1.56x.

Why this ladder is understated

That 1.56x is a floor, not the real gap. The pension bill is capped: above a monthly income ceiling, contributions stop rising even as pay does. Large firms are where the high earners are, so their bills are the ones the ceiling clips hardest. The measured premium at the top is therefore smaller than the wage premium underneath it. When we say the gap is 1.56x, the true earnings gap is wider — we just cannot see how much wider from this file.

That censoring is also why size is the second-strongest axis, not the first. In the companion decomposition, industry explains 42.3% of the pay spread and size 23.5% — but size’s share is measured through a ceiling that hides its upper end. Uncapped, it would rank higher.

The part that isn’t about pay

Size does something the wage number alone misses: it stabilises the job. In the companion cut on separations, the same size ladder runs the other way — the biggest firms shed workers at 2.66% a month against 4.29% at the smallest. So the large employer offers both more pay and more permanence. That is the whole appeal of the big Korean firm in two numbers, and it is why the queue for those jobs is what it is.

What we did not claim

We have not controlled for industry, and industry and size are entangled — banks are both large and well-paid, corner shops both small and not. Some of the size premium is really an industry premium wearing a size label; separating the two is the decomposition’s job, not this article’s. What this article claims is narrower and firmer: however you slice the confounds, the raw size ladder does not have a broken rung.