For the first time in Korea, unemployed graduates outnumber those with only a junior high school education.

PHOTO: SEOUL NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

The labor market is gloomy.

According to the latest data released by Statistics Korea, there are currently 3.048 million people aged 15 and above with a college degree or higher who are unemployed and not looking for work. This is higher than the 3.03 million among those who have only completed junior high school, and is the first time that the number of unemployed people with a college degree has exceeded that of those with only a junior high school education since the agency began keeping statistics.

These people are classified as " economically inactive" meaning they are neither working nor looking for work. This group includes those who are pursuing higher education, studying for exams, taking a break or have given up on the job market. Although not included in the overall unemployment rate, this figure still clearly reflects the trend and unstable structure of the labor market in the land of kimchi, according to the Maeil Business Newspaper .

Just 10 years ago, the gap between the two groups of "economically inactive" with bachelor's degrees or higher and the group of junior high school graduates was more than 1 million people, but in the opposite direction. This makes the university degree, once a symbol of stable career opportunities, less attractive, in the context that Korea is one of the countries with a university enrollment rate of 76.2%, higher than the average of 38 OECD countries (which only fluctuates between 40-50%).

Behind the above figures is a bleak hiring reality, The Korea Herald commented. According to a survey by the Korea Business Federation released in March, only 60.8% of 500 large companies plan to hire this year, the lowest level since 2022. Meanwhile, the manufacturing industry, once a "pillar" of creating jobs for young people, is also facing a decline, with the employment rate in this industry falling to only 15.2%.

On the other hand, job seekers with university degrees often target high-value industries such as technology and finance. However, growth in these sectors is slowing down, pushing many graduates into unemployment. The service sector, which was expected to be a “reservoir” of labor, is facing a similar situation because labor productivity in this sector is expected to be only 39.7% of that of the manufacturing sector in 2024, according to the Bank of Korea.

Amid rising labor costs and prolonged economic uncertainty, businesses are becoming increasingly cautious in hiring, and young people in South Korea are the first to feel the impact, local media outlets in the country concluded.

Many PhDs in Korea are also unemployed.

Previously, data from Statistics Korea released in March also showed that up to 29.6% of 14,442 newly graduated PhDs were labeled "economically inactive" - the highest level since the agency began conducting statistics in 2014. If calculated by age group, of the 537 people under 30 years old with a PhD, 47.7% of them were also unemployed.

In terms of gender, 27.4% of the 6,288 male PhDs were unemployed, while one in three female PhDs was unemployed (about 33% of the 4,154). In terms of salary, nearly half of the employed PhDs only earned between 20 million KRW (377 million VND) and 60 million KRW/year (1.1 billion VND). And 14.4% of the PhDs surveyed said they earned over 100 million KRW/year (1.8 billion VND).

In terms of field of study, the unemployment rate for PhDs in arts and humanities is up to 40% - the highest of all fields. Some other fields with high unemployment rates in Korea are natural sciences, mathematics, statistics (37.7%); social sciences, journalism and information science (33.1%). In contrast, the unemployment rate for PhDs in health and welfare (20.9%), education (21.7%) and business, administration, law (23.9%) is relatively low.