More Jobs, Fewer People
It is being predicted that the supply-demand relationship of jobs and manpower will be reversed starting in 2020.
Kim Kwang-seok, senior researcher at Hyundai Research Institute, predicted on Nov. 30 that there will be a shortage of manpower from the beginning of the 2020s in a report called "Top 10 Structural Changes of Employment."
The current job shortage will change to a manpower shortage due to the baby boomer generation gradually leaving the labor market.
In particular, researcher Kim emphasized that we should pay attention to this reversed phenomenon of growth and employment because employment elasticity (the growth rate of employment related to the growth rate of the economy) has increased sharply.
The Elasticity of Employment index dropped to 0.22 in the late 2000s from 0.41 in the early 1970s. It was the age of growth without employment, in which the employment growth rate dropped more quickly than the economic growth rate.
Kim said, "Employment Elasticity jumped to 0.60, owing to a decrease in the economic growth rate and increase in employment growth rate in the 2010s, and this trend will continue."
Kim also added, "Change of employment without growth means that good quality jobs are hardly created as employment growth is not supported."