주 52시간 근로제의 도입이 임금, 고용 및 고용형태에 미치는 영향에 관한 연구

This study examines the labor market impacts of introducing the 52-hour workweek policy. Since the expected rise in the wage level after the reduction of statutory working hours causes both a substitution and a scale effect, the direction of employment change following the institutional change is theoretically ambiguous. Therefore, this study empirically estimates the effect of the 52-hour workweek policy by analyzing the 2016-2020 work status survey by employment type. Considering that the reduction of statutory working hours was first implemented in workplaces with 300 or more employees in July 2018, we choose to employ the difference-in-difference method and the results show that the effects of the introduction of the 52-hour workweek policy was statistically insignificant. On the other hand, estimating an alternative model that includes the proportion of employees who worked over 52 hours per week before the implementation of the 52-hour workweek policy, we find that the actual working hours decreased, with the hourly wage increasing, mainly in workplaces with a high proportion of employees working over 52 hours. However, the results suggest that the employment level and the number of regular workers decreased mainly in businesses that are expected to be more intensively affected by the 52-hour workweek policy. This implies that in order to minimize the adverse employment effects of the 52-hour workweek policy, it is necessary to adopt complementary measures that take into account the specificity of each industry.