Close to 20% of Young Employees Start Career with Instability

According to Statistics Korea’s data, 761,000 persons aged between 15 and 29 had their first temporary job with a contract period of one year or less last year. The number is equivalent to 19.5 percent of all employees in the same age group.

Compared to a year ago, the ratio slightly fell from 21.2 percent. The ratio had been 11.2 percent in 2008 and rose to 12.4 percent in 2009, 16.3 percent in 2010, and 20.2 percent in 2011. It has remained around 20 percent since 2011, as an increasing number of full-time positions have been replaced with temporary ones since the global financial crisis.

In the meantime, those of the same age who started their career with a job having a contract period of over one year represented 3.1 percent of all employees last year. The ratio dropped by 3.3 percentage points in six years. Also, jobs providing no contract renewal or provisional jobs were the first ones for 34.8 percent of young workers.

Last year, the unemployment rate in the age group increased by one percentage point to 9.0 percent, which is the highest since 1999. Approximately 2.42 million persons in the age group, 62.1 percent of the total, found jobs they can continue with last year.

The rate of stable jobs was 1.6 percentage points higher and 2.7 percentage points lower than in 2013 and 2008, respectively.