Major conglomerates seem to have hired far fewer new employees than they could afford recently.

The latest data released by the Financial Supervisory Service shows the annual sales by the nation's top 10 companies reached W366 trillion (US$1=W1,119) last year, a 2.5-fold jump from 2002.

But this rapid increase in sales -- more than 10 percent a year -- hasn't been matched by the pace at which they have been creating new jobs, as the number of new workers has only climbed 3 percent each year on average. They employed a total of 290,000 new recruits last year, up just 32 percent from 2002.