This study (i) compares the size of social services employment across countries, (ii) case-studies benchmark countries and (iii) estimates the determinants of social services employment. By doing so, this study aims to offer a comprehensive reference for policy making in related fields in Korea. In particular, this study compares the size of social services employment per population using the OECD data. Motivated by the Moon Jae-in administration’s expansion of social services employment, this study compares the value of this variable in 2016, right before the Moon administration, and in 2019, the most recent data available as of this study, across countries. This study takes the representative countries for each category of the commonly used categorization of welfare state regimes, namely Germany (Conservative), the United Kingdom (Liberal), Sweden (Socio-democratic) and Japan (East-Asia). For each case, this study looks at the definition of social services, characteristics of their delivery and the sizes of government spending and employment in that sector. Finally, this study estimates a fixed-effects panel model for the determinants of the size of social services employment per population, using the OECD data.