South Korea’s job market is poised to maintain its challenging nature through the latter half of this year with recruitment expected to fall 35% when compared to H1, reports Pulse News citing research from JobKorea. As the economy grapples with deceleration and the possibility of an economic crisis looms large in China, companies are displaying a shrinking enthusiasm for hiring. Companies intending to hire in the latter half of the year plan for an average recruitment scale of 12.7 staff, down 35% from 19.3 people in the first half of this year. The survey was conducted among 187 corporate human resource managers. The data comes from a survey by job board Incruit showed a similar outlook, with small and medium-sized enterprises being more sensitive to the economic slowdown and cutting back on hiring. Incruit’s survey of 727 local companies, showed 54.4% of medium-sized companies and 58% of small companies had hiring plans for the latter half of the year, but this is down 9.6% and 9.1%, respectively, from the same period last year. Large companies with hiring plans fell by 1.6% to 78.8%.