Despite the novel coronavirus, pharmaceutical and bio companies increased the number of employees last year, according to financial data.

Financial experts analyzed that drugmakers and bio firms suffered relatively less damage by the pandemic, with some of them even expanding investment into developing new growth engines. However, the proportion of male to female workers remained at 7 to 3, indicating a serious imbalance. 

According to data at the Financial Supervisory Service, the number of employees at the 30 largest pharmaceutical and bio companies in consolidated sales totaled 34,357, an increase of 707, or 2.1 percent, from 33,650 in 2019. 

The figure came in stark contrast to the sharply reduced staff numbers at airlines, travel agencies, offline distributors, and flagship manufacturing sectors, such as shipbuilding and machinery, hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic last year. 

Analysts said that while many industries marked poor performance as Covid-19 restricted international movements, pharma and bio firms were affected less severely by the infectious disease. The 30 largest companies' sales increased 14.1 percent to 19.8 trillion won ($17.4 billion), and their operating profit jumped 63.4 percent to 2.3 trillion won ($2 billion). 

Thanks to their relatively robust performances, there were no massive lay-offs or workforce trimming in this sector, they said. Instead, 21 of the 30 companies, or two firms out of three, expanded their payrolls. 

Celltrion recorded the largest number of employee increase by recruiting 157 new workers last year, 23.5 percent of their previous workforce. Out of its 825 employees, 646 were full-time workers, and 179 were part-timers.

Samsung Biologics was hiring 2,886 workers as of the last year-end. The company increased 299 new employees, or 11.6 percent, showing a wide gap of about 500 workers with Hanmi Pharmaceutical, the second-largest employer, with 2,336.   

However, the gender ratio at these companies remained unchanged at 7 to 3, indicating hardly improved gender imbalance. Out of 34,357 employees working at 30 companies last year, the number of female workers stood at 10,436, 30.4 percent of the total. The comparable share was 30 percent in 2019 when there were 10,080 female employees out of 33,650.

According to the FSS data, Gwandong Pharmaceutical showed the highest share of male workers, with 81.3 percent. In contrast, Celltrion Healthcare had the highest female workers’ share, with nearly 50 percent. Out of the total 135 employees at the company, 67 were women.