Plan the subsidy and the employer’s remaining cost
A Korean employer considering a temporary shutdown to retain existing staff needs to separate employee payments from a government subsidy received later.
Assuming that every won of allowance will be reimbursed, or that support arrives before payroll is due, can leave a cash shortfall.
This calculator combines verified allowances, individual scheduled hours, business measure dates and the general 2026 rules to estimate a conditional support budget.
The outputs separate estimated support, the employer’s remaining allowance cost, total burden including other payroll and employer costs, and cash needed before reimbursement.
Unconfirmed conditions withhold the support estimate rather than treating missing evidence as approval.
Use the review to prepare questions for your payroll administrator or local employment center.
It is neither a subsidy approval nor a calculation of the legally required shutdown allowance itself.
The 2026 reform and supported scope
At least 20% for each worker
The reform effective May 12, 2026 assesses reduced hours against each insured worker’s monthly scheduled hours.
Do not reuse the former workplace-wide test requiring a reduction exceeding 20%.
Exactly 20% meets the numerical threshold, but worker eligibility and procedural conditions must also be verified.
Full days and uniform daily payments
The interface supports complete calendar months from June through December 2026.
Each worker must have the same scheduled hours per full day and the same daily allowance across entered shutdown dates.
Partial days, varying daily payments, separate paid-holiday allocation and the May transition month require separate review.
Unpaid measures, specially supported industries, employment-crisis areas and preemptive-response areas may have different conditions or rates and are outside this general calculation.
Priority-support enterprise status is not determined by headcount alone.
Verify your classification, industry and program before confirming that the general rates and cap apply.
All currency amounts are Korean won (KRW), and the page uses Korean rules only.
Choose the correct sales reference period
The reference month is the month immediately before the first month of the employment-retention measures.
Enter the preceding six months from oldest to newest, followed by reference-month sales.
For continuing measures, verify the original reference period instead of automatically moving it forward every month.
Use consistent evidence such as sales ledgers, tax invoices and profit-and-loss records.
Two numerical tests
- The reference month must show at least a 15% decline from the preceding six-month monthly average.
Six months of KRW 10,000,000 each followed by KRW 8,500,000 gives exactly 15% and meets this boundary.
- Alternatively, check a continuing decline: older three-month average > recent three-month average > reference-month sales.
KRW 10,000,000 → 9,000,000 → 8,800,000 passes this trend test even though the 15% test is not met.
Equal amounts do not count as a continuing decline.
A zero historical average has no usable denominator for a percentage decline.
Blank means missing information; zero means actual zero sales.
Failure to meet these two tests is not a final decision on all eligibility routes: an employment center may recognize another qualifying business reason.
The estimate remains withheld unless that recognition is confirmed.
Production decline alone is not an automatic approval input.
Enter individual hours, payments and rates
Monthly scheduled hours come from the applicable contract and work rules, rather than actual attendance including overtime.
Do not automatically reuse a standard payroll divisor.
Full-day scheduled hours multiplied by shutdown dates gives reduced hours; divide this by monthly scheduled hours to obtain the reduction ratio.
Reduced hours exceeding scheduled hours, or individual dates missing from the business date list, produce an input error.
Priority-support enterprises
The general rate is 2/3 of verified eligible payments.
Separately confirm at least 20% reduced hours, more than 90 days since acquisition of insured status and absence of exclusions.
Check daily workers, employees with dismissal notice, planned employer-recommended retirement and the owner’s spouse or direct ascendants/descendants.
Large enterprises
The general rate is 1/2 for reductions of at least 20% but below 50%, and 2/3 at 50% or more.
The threshold uses the unrounded ratio, not the percentage rounded for display.
Verify company classification and the rate applicable to each worker before filing.
The daily allowance input is an actual eligible payment amount, subject to payment evidence.
Do not use 70% of average wages as the subsidy rate or include normal-work wages in this input.
Review the scope and payment requirements under Labor Standards Act Article 46 as referenced by the support notice.
Enter each worker once: splitting one person into several rows changes the monthly ratio.
A worker confirmed as excluded receives zero support in the row, while the entered allowance remains an employer expense.
KRW 68,100 daily cap and 180 business days
Apply the daily cap first
The verified 2026 general cap is KRW 68,100 per worker per day.
The calculation cross-checks the KRW 113,500 basic daily-wage ceiling in Decree Article 68, notice Article 5 and MOEL’s 2026 guidance.
If the daily payment multiplied by the support rate exceeds the cap, use the cap.
Higher allowances therefore need not produce higher subsidies.
The annual 180-day limit applies to the employer’s measure days in the insurance year.
Ten workers stopping work on the same date do not consume ten business days.
Start with a complete, unique business date list, subtract previously recognized days through the prior month, and apply the remaining capacity to this month’s dates in chronological order.
Each worker’s supported dates are the intersection of that set and their individual dates.
For example, after 178 previously used days, business dates 1, 2 and 3 leave annual capacity for dates 1 and 2.
Worker A stopping on 1 and 2 has two dates within the limit; worker B stopping on 2 and 3 has one.
Include business measure dates involving workers not entered in the calculator too.
Use the date confirmation only after checking recognized days and any paid-holiday treatment against the center’s records.
Support, remaining burden and cash formulas
Calculation sequence
- Reduction ratio = full-day scheduled hours × individual shutdown days ÷ monthly scheduled hours.
- Individual support = min(daily allowance × rate, 68,100) × supported days within the annual limit.
- Total allowance = sum of each daily allowance × all individual shutdown days.
- Upfront cash = total allowance + other payroll + employer insurance and other costs.
- Remaining allowance burden = total allowance − support; total burden = upfront cash − support.
Cash needed is the sum of entered outgoings, not the shortfall after subtracting your bank balance or an estimate of borrowing needs.
If allowances have already been paid, read it as the cash required at that payment time.
Enter employer insurance and other payroll separately without duplicating the shutdown allowance; the tool does not assume tax or contribution rates.
The no-support and conditional-support scenarios use the same cost scope so you can prepare for delay or non-approval.
Calculations do not truncate intermediate amounts.
Display rounds fractional KRW to two decimals, so manually summing displayed rows can differ slightly from the displayed total.
This is not a statutory settlement rule: confirm the final whole-won claim calculation with the employment center.
Worked examples
Illustrative general paid-measure allowances, subsidies and remaining allowance cost in KRW| Assumptions | Allowance | Support | Burden |
|---|
| Priority, 100,000 per day × 10 days | 1,000,000 | 666,666.67 | 333,333.33 |
| Large, 40% reduction, 100,000 × 8 days | 800,000 | 400,000 | 400,000 |
| Large, 50% reduction, 100,000 × 10 days | 1,000,000 | 666,666.67 | 333,333.33 |
| Priority, 150,000 × 10 days, daily cap | 1,500,000 | 681,000 | 819,000 |
All cases assume 160 monthly scheduled hours, eight hours per full day, verified eligibility and procedure, enough annual capacity and no other costs.
In the first example, adding KRW 2,000,000 of other payroll and KRW 300,000 of employer costs produces upfront cash of KRW 3,300,000 and post-support burden of KRW 2,633,333.33.
Preparing only about KRW 333,333 because you expect support would miss the cash outlay required in this example.
Step-by-step use and reporting preparation
- Confirm a general paid program, measure month and company classification.
Keep special-program eligibility unresolved until verified.
- Enter the reference month and preceding six months of sales and compare them with evidence.
Ask the center about any alternative qualifying reason when the numerical tests are not met.
- Prepare the annual business history and this month’s complete date list, then enter each worker’s hours, dates and daily allowance.
Do not enter summed person-days as annual business days.
- Verify plan reporting, worker consultation, workforce restrictions, individual status and overlapping subsidies.
Resolve each hold reason and keep excluded workers’ paid allowances in the expense budget.
- Save or print the review to compare with your administrator.
Review the process on Work24 and mark inquiry completion only after making the inquiry yourself.
A plan must normally be reported by the day before the scheduled start; worker-representative consultation and changes also require review.
This calculator does not automatically recognize an exception for reporting after the start.
The notice sets the paid-support application period at within three months of the last day of the measure month.
Confirm the individual deadline and applicable exceptions with the employment center.
Practical scenarios and limits
Identify the binding limit
A higher-paid worker may hit the daily cap before the percentage formula becomes relevant.
Near year-end, remaining business days may constrain support more than the daily amount.
Read the daily-cap reduction and the subsequent annual-limit reduction separately to identify which records need checking.
Prepare for reimbursement delay
Estimated support is not cash already available on payroll day.
Compare the no-support outlay with actual balances and payment dates in your own cash plan.
A lower subsidy does not automatically reduce allowances already paid or legally owed.
Insured-business status, workforce-reduction restrictions during the measures and for the following month, new hiring and its exceptions, repeated same-month support and workforce reductions after earlier support are separate conditions.
Passing a numerical test does not establish those conditions.
For another subsidy covering the same cost, verify whether overlap is allowed and which payments qualify instead of adding subsidies or subtracting an arbitrary offset.
Use the separate shutdown-allowance comparison to prepare legal wage inputs and the first-employee break-even tool for new-hiring decisions.
Frequently asked questions
Is 70% of average wages the government support rate?
No.
The legal shutdown-allowance payment reference and employer support rate are different.
Verified actual payments use a general 2/3 or 1/2 rate and the daily cap.
Must the whole workplace reduce hours by 20%?
The reformed test is at least 20% of each worker’s monthly scheduled hours.
Review each worker even if the workplace-wide average is lower, and verify other conditions too.
When does the large-company rate rise from 1/2 to 2/3?
The general higher-rate branch applies at a reduction of 50% or more.
Exactly 50% is included, and display rounding cannot move an input across the boundary.
Does higher sales necessarily mean no support?
It means the sales tests shown here may not be met.
Another business reason recognized by the center can require separate review; the estimate is withheld until that recognition is confirmed.
Do two workers on the same date consume two annual days?
Enter the date once in the business list.
Determine dates within the annual limit, then intersect that set with each worker’s shutdown dates to calculate individual support.
Does an unknown condition mean support is zero?
Unknown withholds the support total.
That differs from a verified zero caused by exhausted annual capacity or a worker confirmed as excluded.
Can I enter partial days or varying daily allowances?
This version supports full days and a uniform daily allowance for each worker.
Partial days, varying payments and separate paid-holiday allocation require review of the center’s payment and day-count rules.
Does saving the report submit an application?
No.
Saving and printing create review material.
Plan reporting, implementation, the subsidy application and approval are separate; inquiry completion is self-reported.
Official sources and verification date
Verified September 30, 2026 through the official Korean law API and MOEL guidance.
The current Decree and Rules take effect September 18, 2026; the support-notice reform takes effect May 12, 2026.
Recheck the latest notice, enterprise classification, eligible payments, business date history and local center instructions before applying.
- Employment Insurance Act Decree Article 19: eligibility, individual 20% test and restrictions, MST288717
- Decree Article 20 and Article 21: reporting, rates and annual 180 days
- Enforcement Rules Article 24: sales tests, MST288723; Articles 28 and 31 cover supporting documents
- MOEL Notice 2026-30, Articles 5, 6 and 10: cap, period and payments; Decree Article 68: basic daily-wage ceiling
- MOEL 2026 reform guidance and attached program overview, KRW 68,100 cap guidance
- Labor Standards Act Article 46: shutdown allowance requirements, MST283457, effective August 20, 2026
Prepare payment evidence and cash first
Match business dates and individual allowances to actual records, then save the hold reasons and cash requirement with the estimate.
Use them to ask the center about the program, reporting timing, eligible payments and remaining annual capacity.
If conditions change, update the inputs and confirmations before relying on an earlier result.