Average retirement age slightly up at large companies: poll

SEOUL, June 12 (Yonhap) -- The average retirement age at local conglomerates stood at 57.3 in 2010, slightly up from 57.2 the previous year, a poll by the labor ministry showed Sunday.
The average retirement age was compiled through the ministry's survey of 1,829 workplaces employing more than 300 people. The corporate retirement age had steadily risen from 56.7 in 2003 and 56.9 in 2006 to 57.1 in 2008.
By company, 36.5 percent of the polled workplaces, or 668 companies, set the retirement age at 55, followed by 22.7 percent setting it at 58, 17.4 percent at 60 and 10.4 percent at 57, it noted.
In a separate poll of 8,423 workplaces with more than 100 employees, 12.1 percent said they were enforcing the wage peak system, which allows employees to accept a reduced salary for an opportunity to work past the companies' set retirement ages.
It is the first time since the annual survey was introduced in 2005 that the corporate adoption rate for the wage peak system has topped 10 percent.
Ministry officials said the government will continue to encourage local employers to give more work opportunities to their workers through an extension of the retirement age and the introduction of the wage peak system.
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