Hankyung Research Institute Predicts More Than Half of University Graduates Will Be Unemployed This Year

2020 University Students' Employment Perception Survey
"New Hiring Environment is Difficult" 75.5%

[Asia Economy Reporter Dongwoo Lee] A survey revealed that even after graduation, more than half of a class will be in a so-called unemployed state without jobs. There is a call to concentrate national capabilities on expanding companies' employment capacity through regulatory reform and securing employment flexibility.

According to the '2020 University Students' Employment Perception Survey' conducted by the Korea Economic Research Institute targeting 4,158 students and graduates from four-year universities nationwide, the expected employment rate for this year's graduates is 44.5%, with 55.5% expected to be unable to find jobs.

The proportion of respondents who answered that the expected employment rate for graduates is below 50% reached 60.5% of the survey population. Considering that the actual employment rate of graduates from four-year universities nationwide over the past five years (2014?2018) was around 62.6% to 64.5%, the Korea Economic Research Institute stated that this year's expected employment rate for university graduates is a very pessimistic forecast.

About 75.5%, or roughly 8 out of 10 university students, responded that the new college graduate recruitment environment this year is 'more difficult than last year.' This is 29.4 percentage points higher than the 46.1% who responded 'more difficult than last year' in last year's survey. Conversely, the proportion who said the difficulty of employment is 'similar to last year' dropped by 21.5 percentage points from 30.6% last year to 9.1% this year, and those who responded 'better than last year' also decreased by 1.2 percentage points from 2.5% last year to 1.3% this year.

Looking at employment difficulty by half-year, 56.8% of university students, a majority, believe that the employment environment in the second half of this year has worsened compared to the difficult employment situation in the first half. Only 1.6% responded that it is 'better than the first half.'

Regarding difficulties in the job preparation process due to the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), the most cited reason was 'intensified competition for entry due to reduced recruitment opportunities' (38.1%). This was followed by 'difficulty securing practical experience opportunities such as experiential internships' (25.4%), 'increased economic burden of job preparation due to a decrease in short-term jobs' (18.2%), and 'heightened psychological inhibition' (17.4%).

Public Enterprises Rank First in University Students' Desired Employment... Actual Expectations Lean Toward Small and Medium Enterprises

The companies university students hope to work for are ranked as follows: ▲public enterprises (21.5%) ▲large corporations (16.8%) ▲government (civil servants) (16.8%) ▲mid-sized companies (15.6%) ▲small and medium enterprises (11.8%) ▲foreign companies (9.0%) ▲financial institutions (3.9%).

However, the companies they actually expect to be employed by are ranked as: ▲small and medium enterprises (25.0%) ▲mid-sized companies (19.1%) ▲public enterprises (16.0%) ▲government (civil servants) (15.9%) ▲large corporations (8.6%) ▲foreign companies (6.0%).

Compared to last year, the expected employment proportion for small and medium enterprises increased the most by 7.7 percentage points (from 17.3% in 2019 to 25.0% in 2020), while large corporations decreased the most by 6.2 percentage points (from 14.8% in 2019 to 8.6% in 2020).

Regarding the recently expanding non-face-to-face recruitment, a majority of 50.6% responded positively. The proportion of negative responses was 21.4%. Among those who responded positively, the most cited reason was 'prevention of COVID-19 infection and spread' (42.9%). This was followed by 'saving costs and time in recruitment stages' (28.6%), 'strengthening fairness of recruitment opportunities' (17.1%), and 'enhancing objectivity and fairness of evaluation criteria' (11.2%).

The main reason for negative responses was 'difficulty in properly appealing oneself compared to face-to-face methods' (41.4%). This was followed by 'increased possibility of dishonest behavior' (25.8%), 'insufficient supervision during exam and interview stages' (19.4%), and 'possibility of electronic device failure or network errors' (12.3%).

Choo Kwang-ho, Director of Economic Policy at the Korea Economic Research Institute, stated, “As the vitality of companies, the main agents of job creation, rapidly declines recently, the youth employment market is trapped in a long dark tunnel. If we leave the youth employment crisis as it is, there will be no future for our society. We must have a sense of crisis and concentrate national capabilities on expanding companies' employment capacity through regulatory reform and securing employment flexibility.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.