Samsung to hire 5 500 graduates

Seoul - Samsung, South Korea's largest conglomerate, on Wednesday announced plans to hire 5 500 college graduates this year despite the global economic downturn.

The company originally planned to recruit 4 000 full-time employees this year, compared with 7 500 last year.

"But this was revised upward to 5 500 in order to give greater opportunities to recent college graduates," it said in a statement, adding its affiliates would also recruit 2 000 interns.

But the conglomerate has not set a group-wide investment plan for 2009 due to concerns about the deepening global crisis.

In the final quarter of last year Samsung Electronics, the group's flagship business, reported its first-ever quarterly loss, which it said amounted to 20 billion won ($13.8m).

For the full year the world's largest memory chip maker saw its net profit drop 25% from a year ago to 5.53 trillion won.

The country's unemployment rate stood at 3.6% in January, compared to 3.3% a month earlier, despite a government drive to save jobs by expanding fiscal and tax incentives to companies.

- AFP