Even as the "Gongsi Craze" Subsides... "20% of College Graduates Are Gongsi Students, Only 16% Pass"

33.7% of Last Year's Job Seekers Were Public Service Exam Candidates... About 3 out of 10
84% Failed the Exam... Concerns Arise Over Wasting Talented Individuals
'Gongsi Fever' Slows Down... Competition Rate Continues to Decline

The scene of the national civil service written examination site. Photo by Yonhap News

[Asia Economy Intern Reporter Kim Se-eun] Despite the declining popularity of the so-called 'civil service exam' that once swept the job market, it has been confirmed that only 16% of public service exam takers actually pass.

On the 10th, Park Seong-jae, a senior researcher at the Korea Labor Institute, presented a paper titled "Medium- to Long-term Labor Market Outcomes of Civil Service Exam Failures" at the Employment Panel Survey Academic Conference held on the same day.

According to the report, the number of public service exam takers last year was approximately 279,000. This accounts for 33.7% of all job seekers, meaning that about 3 out of 10 job seekers are preparing for the civil service exam.

However, the actual pass rate was only 16%. Analyzing the characteristics of public service exam takers based on the youth panel of the Korea Employment Information Service, out of a sample of 3,135 people, 643 (20.5%) were public service exam takers. Including overlapping individuals, there were 107 high-level exam takers, 131 for grade 7, and 520 for grade 9.

Among them, the actual number of successful candidates was 103, or 16%, meaning 84% failed. This raises concerns about significant national manpower waste. In fact, failure to pass the civil service exam was found to negatively affect the quality of future jobs.

Based on the third year after university graduation, the hourly wage of those who failed to prepare for the civil service exam was 5.6% lower than those without any exam preparation experience. By the fifth year after graduation, this gap widened to 12.1%.

Park explained, "If people remain inactive in the labor market for a long time preparing for the exam, it causes significant national losses in terms of production and consumption. Due to the labor market structure where demand exceeds supply, talented individuals fill good jobs first, so delaying entry into the labor market due to exam preparation increases the likelihood of obtaining lower-quality jobs."

He added, "About 20% of university graduates preparing for the civil service exam is a national waste," and emphasized, "Policies are needed to support those who give up midway."

Meanwhile, the overall competition rate for the civil service exam appears to be gradually decreasing. According to the '2022 National Civil Service Open Recruitment Exam Competition Rate' released by the Ministry of Personnel Management on the 8th, the competition rate for the grade 7 open recruitment exam was 42.7 to 1 on average, the lowest since 1979.

The competition rate for the grade 7 open recruitment exam has been steadily declining since it recorded 122.7 to 1 in 2011. This year, the competition rate for the grade 9 open recruitment exam was also 29.2 to 1, the lowest in 30 years since 19.3 to 1 in 1992.

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