Employment Insurance to Cover Cross-Recruiting Insurance Planners... 17,000 More to Join Next Year

Starting next year, the government will expand the coverage of employment insurance to include four additional job categories, such as cross-recruiting insurance planners and kindergarten and daycare after-school instructors. As a result, approximately 17,000 people will newly be eligible for employment insurance benefits.

On the 22nd, the Ministry of Employment and Labor announced that it would issue a legislative notice for a partial revision of the Enforcement Decree of the Employment Insurance Act, which includes these changes. The core focus of this amendment is to unify the application criteria for employment insurance and occupational accident insurance by expanding employment insurance coverage to certain workers providing labor services, whose scope had previously been narrower than that of occupational accident insurance. Although employment insurance was first applied to 12 job categories in July 2021 and has since expanded to 19, discrepancies persisted as some roles were only covered by occupational accident insurance.

The newly eligible categories include: cross-recruiting insurance planners in the insurance planner field; mutual aid recruiters for credit unions and Saemaul Geumgo; specialized after-school instructors at kindergartens and special activity program instructors at daycare centers in the after-school instructor field; delivery personnel responsible for home logistics under the Living Logistics Service Act in the delivery field; and affiliated recruiters in credit card membership solicitation. These constitute four distinct occupational categories.

In order to strengthen the response to the rapidly declining birthrate issue, plans are underway to elevate the Low Birthrate and Aging Society Commission to an official government agency. The photo shows the daycare center at the Government Seoul Office Building on the 10th. Photo by Yongjun Cho jun21@

The Ministry expects that about 17,000 additional individuals will newly join employment insurance as a result of this policy change. For example, while elementary school after-school instructors have been covered by both employment and occupational accident insurance, after-school instructors at kindergartens and daycare centers have so far been covered only by occupational accident insurance—resulting in different social insurance coverage despite performing similar work. The Ministry expects this amendment will resolve such discrepancies in fairness.

Business owners with fewer than 10 employees and labor providers with a monthly remuneration of less than 2.7 million won are eligible for an 80% subsidy on their employment insurance premiums through the Durunuri Social Insurance Support Program. The legislative notice period runs for 40 days, from today until August 31.

Minister of Employment and Labor Kim Younghoon stated, "We will move beyond job-by-job expansions and broaden employment insurance coverage to encompass all labor service income earners under the National Tax Act, thereby building a social safety net for 'all working people.'"

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