2023-05-02 21:00:18
The youth unemployment rate in the first quarter of this year was 6.7%, the lowest ever
90,000 youth employed in lodging/restaurants↑
Decreased full-time jobs and increased precarious jobs
‘Youth taking a break’ is also the biggest ever
On the 20th of last month, office workers cross a crosswalk at Sejong-daero in Jung-gu, Seoul.
South Korea’s youth unemployment rate has hit an all-time low since statistics were compiled in the first quarter of this year (January-March). It is difficult to see that the problem of youth employment, the representative ‘sore finger’ of the Korean economy, which has been regarded as a homework for each successive administration, has been completely resolved. This is because young people are mainly concentrated in restaurants and accommodations, which are directly related to the domestic economy, and employment stability is declining. According to the Economically Active Population Survey by the National Statistical Office on the 2nd, the youth unemployment rate between the ages of 15 and 29 in the first quarter of this year was 6.7% (279,000 unemployed out of 4.17 million economically active young people). This is the lowest in the first quarter since June 1999, when the National Statistical Office changed the job search period from one week to four weeks. Starting with 10.1% in 2000 (as of the first quarter), the youth unemployment rate fluctuated between 7 and 9% every year, before peaking at 11.3% in 2016. This means that more than 1 in 10 young people looking for work were unemployed. However, following significantly lowering from 9.9% in 2021, the period of Corona 19, to 6.7% last year, it remains at the lowest level ever this year. Compared to the 1.8 percentage point (5.0 → 3.2%) drop in the unemployment rate of the population aged 15 and over this year compared to 2021, the improvement in the youth unemployment rate is relatively remarkable.
The ‘expanded unemployment rate’, which includes short-time workers (less than 36 hours a week) who want to work more and potential job seekers who have not been able to find a job or have not been able to find a job due to personal circumstances, is also showing a clear improvement. The expanded youth unemployment rate in the first quarter of this year was 17.6%, down 5.5 percentage points from 2016. However, the improvement trend of indicators on the outside and the situation on the inside are very different. The employment distribution of youth employed by industry, which was announced by the National Statistical Office as of May last year, was divided into six industries and expanded and analyzed with the latest data for 20 industries as of March this year using the ‘Economically Active Population Survey Micro Data’. It was the ‘accommodation and restaurant business’ that alone led the recent increase in the number of young people employed. As of March this year, the number of young people employed in this industry was 643,000, a 90,000 increase compared to March last year. This is in contrast to the sharp decline in the number of young people employed in the wholesale and retail industries (-76,000) and the manufacturing industry (-50,000), where jobs have been directly hit by online shopping and the expansion of unmanned stores. In particular, at the time of the corona, demand for delivery surged, and the number of people employed in transportation and warehousing, where ‘young riders’ were driven, shrank by 41,000 from a year ago. Thanks to the digital and non-face-to-face spread during the corona period, the transportation and information communication industries, which led to an increase in youth jobs, seem to be supported by restaurants and accommodations. The problem is that while the amount of jobs for young people is maintaining the status quo, the quality of jobs is deteriorating. In fact, an analysis of microdata from the National Statistical Office showed that the number of young regular workers (2.493 million) with a labor contract of more than one year in March this year decreased by 45,000 from the previous year. On the other hand, the number of youth temporary workers (1,068,000) with a contract period of more than one month to less than one year and youth daily workers (138,000) with a contract period of less than one month increased by 13,000 and 10,000, respectively. Kim Yu-bin, a senior researcher at the Korea Labor Institute, said, “The lodging and restaurant industries are not industries with high employment stability because they traditionally have short service periods and very active job transfers.” pointed out The share of young people in the lodging and restaurant industry increased from 26.5% in March last year to 28.4% in March this year. In other words, if domestic consumption deteriorates in the future due to high interest rates and economic slowdown, young people will be the first to take a direct hit. It seems that the recent trend of young people gathering in an open KakaoTalk chat room called ‘Geogji’, criticizing each other’s spending details and emphasizing infinite savings is also related to the expansion of unstable jobs.
health. Even though the situation is different from them, it is never a good sign that the number of ‘young people taking a break’ is rapidly increasing. Lee Seung-yoon, a professor of social welfare at Chung-Ang University, said, “The self-reliance support policies for NEET young people (young people who do not receive education, employment, or vocational training), young people who have given up looking for jobs, and young people in seclusion, which the last government paid much attention to, seem to be insufficient with the current government.” He said, “Even if the youth employment policy is passive, it would be nice if the policy at least focused on the weak would be good.” Reporter Park Jong-oh [email protected] and Ahn Tae-ho staff reporter [email protected] 1683079861
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