The First Employment of Young Adults Delayed... 0.7 Months Longer Than a Year Ago

Statistics Korea Announces 'May 2022 Supplementary Survey Results on Youth Population in Economic Activity Survey'

[Asia Economy Sejong=Reporter Kwon Haeyoung] The average time it takes for young people aged 15 to 29 to find their first job after graduation was 10.8 months, an increase of 0.7 months compared to one year ago.

According to the "2022 May Economically Active Population Survey Youth Supplementary Survey Results" released by Statistics Korea on the 19th, the youth population as of last May was 8,595,000, a 2.3% decrease compared to the same month last year. The youth economic participation rate rose by 2.5 percentage points during the same period to 51.5%.

The number of employed youth was 4,104,000, and the employment rate increased by 3.4 percentage points to 47.8%. The number of unemployed youth was 320,000, and the unemployment rate decreased by 2.1 percentage points to 7.2%.

The average time to graduate for all university graduates was 4 years and 3.7 months, and for 4-year university graduates, it was 5 years and 1.7 months, increasing by 0.3 months and 0.4 months respectively compared to the same month last year.

The average time to first employment was 10.8 months when the first job was a wage worker, which is 0.7 months longer than one year ago. The average tenure at the first job was 1 year and 6.8 months, an increase of 0.6 months. The industry of the first job was most commonly business, personal, and public services at 42.2%, and the occupation was highest in service and sales workers at 32.4%.

The wage at the time of employment in the first job was most commonly between 1.5 million and 2 million KRW at 36.6%, followed by 2 million to 3 million KRW (28.4%), and 1 million to 1.5 million KRW (16.1%). The main reason for leaving the first job was dissatisfaction with working conditions such as pay and working hours, accounting for 45.1%, nearly half of the total.

Among the youth who were economically inactive, the proportion preparing for employment exams was 16.9%, down 2.2 percentage points from one year ago. The fields for employment exam preparation were general civil service (29.9%), general companies (23.8%), and technical certifications and others (18.6%) in that order.

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