A new survey found that small businesses suffering from hardship are hiring less foreign workers due to the burden of labor costs. 

The Korea Federation of SMEs said on Monday that earlier this month it surveyed some one-thousand-100 small and medium-sized businesses that did not report hiring foreign nationals with E-9 visas this first quarter, despite having done so in 2018. 

According to the survey results, 34 percent of companies cited the burden of high labor costs as the reason for not hiring foreign workers, while 31-point-two percent noted a generally adverse business environment as the reason. 

The poll also showed that just 36-and-a-half percent of the small firms were considering hiring any workers this year, while 14 percent said they are mulling job cuts. 

The federation assessed that small-sized companies are hiring less workers because their production is facing a slump and businesses of smaller scales had a tendency to be more sensitive to burdens of labor costs.