New data finds that 75 out of every 100 people in the top one percent of income earners nationwide worked in the Seoul metropolitan area.

According to the data that ruling Democratic Party lawmaker Kim Hoi-jae acquired from the National Tax Service on Monday, the number of top-one-percent earners in the country amounted to nearly 195-thousand as of 2020.

Of that total, 74-and-a-half percent, or roughly 145-thousand, worked at jobs based in Seoul, Gyeonggi Province or Incheon.

Of the 17 metropolitan and provincial governments, Seoul had the largest share of top-one-percent earners with some 87-thousand working there, followed by Gyeonggi Province, Busan and South Gyeongsang Province.

Observers said the data shows that high-quality jobs are predominantly concentrated in the Seoul area, thus evidently demonstrating a serious imbalance in the regional distribution of jobs.