Youth unemployment in Korea remains high, latest figures show
The unemployment rate for people aged 15–29 in South Korea is around 3.5 times higher than for the over-40s, according to the latest official figures.
Data from Korea’s national statistics office show that the youth unemployment rate in October was 8.1%, compared to an overall rate of 3.4%—the lowest it has been this year.
But the youth unemployment rate has fallen since June, when it hit 10.1%, its highest in 15 years.
Bloomberg reports that the Korean government is addressing the problem by helping young Koreans find work overseas via its K-Move program. Around 14,000 people have left Korea through the program in the last five years, mainly to China, Australia, and Canada.
Like other developed countries, including its neighbour Japan, South Korea has an aging population and declining fertility, while the number of Koreans living overseas is increasing. Changzoo Song has written for IZA World of Labor about how the Korean government is mitigating these trends by engaging its diaspora population through “virtual extraterritorial citizenship”.
Song writes: “The government’s Overseas Koreans Foundation is fostering a Korean identity among the diaspora, enhancing and expanding economic and political cooperation with them, and building networks linking them to one another and to Koreans in South Korea.”
Elsewhere, Jochen Kluve has written for us about government efforts to reduce youth unemployment in OECD countries. He writes that: “Active labor market programs can help, if they are comprehensive—including job-search assistance, counseling, training, and placement services—but they are expensive. Even more important may be earlier education system interventions to improve the school-to-work transition.”
Read more on this story at Bloomberg.
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Engaging the diaspora in an era of transnationalism by Changzoo Song
Youth labor market interventions by Jochen Kluve
Youth bulges and youth unemployment by David Lam
The effect of early retirement schemes on youth employment by René Böheim