The country’s finance industry suffered its largest job losses in five years last year, state researchers said in a report released Wednesday.

In last year’s January-November period, the average number of jobs in the finance industry fell to 840,000, down 2.8 percent from a year ago, according to the report by Statistics Korea.

About 24,000 jobs vanished from the financial sector, dragging its share of the nations jobs to down 3.13 percent. This is the largest job loss since 2009, when about 55,000 employees left the industry to drop the sector’s share to the lowest 3.12 percent amid the global financial crisis.

Corporate downsizing has been a common strategy in different categories of the finance industry throughout the year. The low-interest, low-growth environment curbed the profits of brokerages, resulting in less hiring and more branch closures. Last year, the lenders shuttered about 270 branches nationwide, with the major domestic banks including Kookmin, Shinhan and Nonghyup planning to close down more this year.

The Korean operations of foreign banks, such as Citibank Korea and Standard Chartered Bank of Korea, also suffered a similar fate.

Although the finance sector played the grim reaper last year, the combined employment of the country’s industrial sectors marked the fastest growth in 12 years. The increased employment in restaurant, wholesale and retail, and health care businesses led the growth, according to Statistics Korea.

The Korea Development Institute, another state-run economic think tank, estimates that there is going to more churn in the finance industry, with competition intensifying over the next few years. According to its recent survey, about 71 percent of the chief executives at the country’s 34 brokerages responded that only the 30-60 percent of the securities firms will remain in business after a few years.

By Chung Joo-won (joowonc@heraldcorp.com)