With this year's Lunar New Year holiday totaling five days including the weekend, one in four corporations will take four days off or fewer. About half of corporations said this year's Lunar New Year business conditions are similar to last year, and it is positive that responses saying conditions worsened from a year earlier fell to two-thirds of last year's level. More responses said operating profit will improve this year compared with last year than said it will be weak.
On Feb. 8, the Korea Enterprises Federation surveyed 447 corporations nationwide with five or more employees on "the 2026 Lunar New Year holiday leave status," and 97.8% of responding corporations said they will take time off during this year's holiday. Looking at their leave periods, "five days" was the most common at 64.8%, followed by "four days or fewer" at 26.1%. Corporations taking "six days or more" came to 9.2%. This year's Lunar New Year holiday runs from the 16th to the 18th, and adding the preceding weekend (the 14th–15th) allows for a total of five days off.
Among corporations taking four days off or fewer, the most cited reason was "while the workload burden is not great, work is unavoidable to meet delivery deadlines and operate stores" (59.6%). Among corporations taking six days or more—exceeding the typical five-day break—most said they "are implementing mandatory leave under collective agreements and work rules rather than due to workload or expense issues" (59.4%). The share responding "six days or more of leave" was higher among corporations with 300 or more employees (22.7%) than among those with fewer than 300 (7.6%).
Corporations planning to pay Lunar New Year bonuses this year stood at 58.7%, down 2.8 percentage points from last year's 61.5%. Among corporations that had paid Lunar New Year bonuses through last year but will not this year, the most common reason was "removal of the payment item due to revisions to collective agreements or work rules" at 46.7%. Responses citing a deterioration in payment capacity came to 26.7%.
As for Lunar New Year business conditions as of January, "similar to last year" was the most common response at 55.6%. Those saying conditions "worsened from last year" totaled 39.5%, which is two-thirds of the responses citing deterioration last year (60.5%). However, only 4.9% said conditions "improved from last year."
Regarding this year's operating profit outlook, 50.9% said it "will increase from last year," exceeding those saying it "will decrease" (36.0%). Those saying it "will be the same as last year" came to 13.1%. Responses predicting an increase from a year earlier were more common among corporations with 300 or more employees (58.3%) than among those with fewer than 300 (50.1%).