"Even My Successful Classmate Wasn't Spared..." One in 8 Middle-Income Earners Saw Their Income Halved

Largest increase in income declines among all income groups
Income decline rate in the third quintile reached 38.9% in 2024
Share of people with rising incomes fell 5.7 percentage points to 57.3%

Four out of 10 people in the middle-income group saw their income decline from the previous year. This was the highest rate in four years, since the COVID-19 pandemic. The share of people whose income increased also fell the most among middle-income earners.

Yonhap News Agency reported on November 1, citing the Ministry of Data and Statistics' 2024 Income Mobility Statistics, that 38.9% of people in the third quintile by earned and business income in 2023 saw their income decline in 2024. This was up 3.7 percentage points from the previous year and the highest rate since 2020, when the impact of COVID-19 was felt, at 41.2%.

The third income quintile is the middle group when the population is divided into five groups according to earned and business income. In other words, about four out of 10 people in the third quintile saw their earnings fall the following year.

Office workers commuting to work. The photo is not directly related to the content of this article. Yonhap News Agency

The share of people whose income declined also rose in other quintiles. It increased by 3.3 percentage points in the fourth quintile, 2.5 percentage points in the second quintile, and 0.9 percentage points in the fifth quintile. By contrast, it fell by 0.2 percentage points in the first quintile, the lowest 20% of income earners. The decline was most pronounced among middle-income earners.

The magnitude of the income declines was also substantial. Among people in the third quintile, 12.8% saw their earned and business income fall by more than half from the previous year, up 0.5 percentage points. This means that about one in eight middle-income earners saw their income cut in half. Of those whose income declined, 32.9% experienced a drop of more than half.

By contrast, the share of people whose income increased was just 57.3%, down 5.7 percentage points from 63.0% the previous year. This was also the largest decline among all income quintiles.

In particular, the share of people whose income rose by 10% to 50% fell by 6.3 percentage points, from 27.2% to 20.9%. The share whose income increased by 50% or more also dropped, from 12.0% to 9.7%. Meanwhile, the share whose income rose by less than 10% increased by 2.9 percentage points from the previous year, to 26.7%.

Income growth also slowed across the overall population analyzed. In 2024, 61.4% of people saw their earned and business income increase, down 2.6 percentage points from the previous year. The share whose income declined was 36.0%, up 2.1 percentage points.

By age group, the share of young people (ages 15-39) whose income increased fell from 67.5% to 64.2%. The rate also declined among middle-aged people (ages 40-64), from 63.6% to 59.8%. In contrast, it rose among people aged 65 and older, from 52.4% to 56.5%.

An official from the Ministry of Data and Statistics said, "Performance bonuses and other benefits from some manufacturing sectors, such as semiconductors, tend to be concentrated in the fourth and fifth quintiles, where people in their 30s and 40s make up a large share." The official added, "There may be limits to how directly the benefits of strong exports reach middle-income groups, such as the third quintile."

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