The number of South Koreans aged 29 and under enrolled in employment insurance is set to fall this year to levels last seen in the mid-2010s, as population decline combines with a shift of young workers into unstable jobs such as ultra-short-term part-time work.
An average of about 2.228 million young people aged 29 and under were regularly enrolled in employment insurance each month from January through September, according to the Ministry of Employment and Labor's report on labor market trends based on September employment administration data, released on the 14th.
If the trend holds, enrollment among young people will mark its lowest level in a decade this year. Annual figures peaked at 2.495 million in 2022 before falling to 2.279 million last year — itself the lowest since 2016, when the figure stood at 2.274 million.
To surpass the 2016 level of 2.274 million this year, monthly enrollment would have to surge above 2.41 million in each of the remaining three months. That is effectively impossible given the seasonal drop in enrollment at year-end as contracts expire. Instead, the figure is on track to retreat to levels seen in 2015, when it was 2.232 million, or even 2013 and 2014, when it ranged from 2.2 million to 2.21 million — a setback of roughly 12 to 13 years.
Employment insurance enrollment is regarded as a key gauge of job quality, more telling than the headline number of people employed. The data on regular enrollment excludes only ultra-short-term workers putting in less than 15 hours a week and daily-hire workers, while covering permanent employees as well as temporary and contract workers who work 15 hours or more a week. A steep drop in enrollment among young people therefore means they are being pushed out of formal jobs that come with the four major social insurance programs and employment safety nets.
While the decline partly reflects natural population shrinkage, the decisive factor is the higher barrier to entry in the industries young people favor most. The population aged 29 and under fell by 144,000 in August from a year earlier, according to Statistics Korea's economically active population survey. Yet 44,000 of the 55,000 decline in young enrollees in September — about 80% — came from manufacturing, down 21,000; information and communications, down 15,000; and professional, scientific and technical services, down 8,000.
New job seekers aged 29 and under registering through Employment 24, the government's public employment portal, also fell 6.3% from a year earlier in September to 91,000. Even accounting for the shrinking population, the job-openings-to-applicants ratio, which measures the number of openings per job seeker, remained low at 0.48. Analysts say a pattern is taking hold in which young people, unable to find the quality jobs they want, delay entering the labor market or give up looking for work altogether.
