New data finds that the gap caused by a stalled growth in workers’ salary and soaring inflation has resulted in the largest negative balance since the 2009 global financial crisis.

That’s according to data that main opposition Democratic Party Rep. Lim Kwang-hyun, who is on the National Assembly’s Strategy and Finance Committee, acquired from the National Tax Service on Friday. 

The data found that South Korea's average per capita income stood at some 43-point-three million won, or nearly 30-thousand U.S. dollars, as of 2023, marking a two-point-eight percent increase from a year earlier. 

Such growth was the lowest since 2020 when the COVID pandemic was in full swing and is lower than the average growth of three-point-six percent posted in the past ten years. 

The data also found that, at the same time, the nation’s inflation surged more than three-and-a-half percent.

Consumer prices were estimated to have jumped three-point-six percent in 2023 on-year, posting growth for the second consecutive year after recording growth of five-point-one percent in 2022. 

As a result, the gap between growth in workers’ salary and inflation amounted to zero-point-eight percentage point, marking a minus figure for the second straight year and reaching the largest negative balance since 2009.