A survey finds that South Korean small and medium businesses are not hiring foreign workers amid rising wages and sluggish economic conditions.

The Korea Federation of Small and Medium Business said on Sunday that it recently conducted a poll on 577 member companies that did not report hiring foreign nationals with E-9 visas this year, despite having done so in 2017.

According to the poll results, over 38 percent of companies cited the burden of high labor costs as the reason for not hiring foreign workers, while 24 percent quoted a generally adverse business environment as the reason.

The poll also showed that just 40 percent of the small firms were considering hiring any workers next year.