Youth 'Chwijunsaeng' Decrease for Third Consecutive Year

Statistics Korea, Supplementary Survey Results on the Youth Population

The number of young people preparing for employment, including civil servants, has decreased for the third consecutive year.

According to the supplementary survey on youth by Statistics Korea on the 16th, among the economically inactive youth population (aged 15-29) of 4.066 million as of last May, 565,000 were preparing for employment exams, a decrease of 69,000 compared to the previous year. The proportion of youth not preparing for employment increased by 1.3 percentage points from the previous year.

The number of young people preparing for employment exams declined in 2022 for the first time in four years and has continued to decrease for three years.

Accordingly, the share of those preparing for employment exams among the economically inactive population also fell from 15.2% last year to 13.9% this year.

By field of preparation, the number of general civil servant candidates dropped by 61,000 to 130,000. The proportion of civil servant exam candidates among all employment exam takers also decreased from 29.3% to 23.2%. The number of youth preparing for general companies decreased slightly from 173,000 to 168,000, but their share among employment exam takers increased from 27.3% to 29.7%.

Among 3.765 million young people with employment experience after graduation, 2.472 million, or 65.7%, have experience changing jobs. This is a decrease of 0.2 percentage points compared to one year ago.

Those with job change experience are individuals who have left their first job and are currently employed elsewhere or are unemployed or economically inactive.

The most common reason for leaving the first job was dissatisfaction with working conditions such as pay and working hours, accounting for 45.5%. However, this is 0.4 percentage points lower than a year ago. The proportion of youth who left their first job for personal reasons such as health, childcare, or marriage increased by 0.7 percentage points from the previous year.

Among young people with employment experience, 59.8% earned less than 2 million KRW at their first job. This means that 6 out of 10 had a monthly salary below 2 million KRW at their first workplace. However, the proportion earning less than 2 million KRW decreased by 4.6 percentage points compared to the previous year.

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