Samsung reported a drop in employees for the first time in seven years

For the first time in seven years, the headcount of **Samsung** Electronics came down in 2016 mainly due to its restructuring in China, the company data showed on 2 July. The number of employees of the world’s largest smartphone and memory chip manufacturer fell 5.2 percent to 308,745 in 2016 from 3,25,677 the previous year, Yonhap news agency reported. By region, domestic employees dropped 3.8 percent to 93,204, and those abroad declined 5.8 per cent to 2,15,541. As of the end of last year, the percentage of the employees at Samsung’s companies abroad dropped 0.4 percent to 69.8 percent. The number of Samsung employees in China fell 17.5 percent to 37,070 last year from 44,948 the previous year while those in North and South America surged 8.5 percent to 25,988. A company official attributed the cut in the number of employees partly to the **sale of its printing business** to HP. Corporate restructuring in Samsung’s factories in China and other Asian countries also led to the overseas manpower cut, he said. The ratio of female employees accounted for 44 percent last year, down two percentage points from a year earlier. The proportion of female managers and executives, however, rose to 12.7 percent and 6.3 percent last year from 12.4 percent and 4.5 percent, respectively, from a year earlier. Samsung sold the printing business to HP in 2016 with an approx. price of $1.05 billion.