20-Somethings Put Away Their Resumes, 30-Somethings Turn to Necessity-Driven Startups... The Reality of Youth Employment

Giving up the job search or starting a business out of necessity: two extremes
680,000 young people "just resting"
More people unable to find work are starting businesses without preparation

After graduating from a regional teachers' college, A, a woman in her 30s who had worked as a private academy instructor, tried to return to work after her career was interrupted by childcare but was unsuccessful. Unable to find a job that fit her child's drop-off and pickup schedule, she took a course costing 2 million won and used 3 million won as startup capital to launch a business supplying educational materials to schools through the School Marketplace (S2B). But fierce competition means she takes home only a few hundred thousand won a month. She has recently been looking into selling fruit on consignment, but has yet to take the plunge because of the burden of handling returns. "I had no choice but to start because I couldn't find a suitable job, but it's hard to keep going with so little capital and experience," A said.

As the labor market fails to absorb young people, they are being driven to opposite extremes: giving up on finding work or starting businesses out of necessity. While 680,000 young people have given up looking for work and are "just resting," others who have failed to find jobs are jumping into small-scale self-employment without preparation.

According to the results of the Ministry of Data and Statistics' supplementary survey on non-wage workers and the economically inactive population from its August Economically Active Population Survey, released on November 5, 2.551 million people were resting without looking for work. Of these, 377,000 were in their 20s and 303,000 were in their 30s, bringing the total among young people to 680,000. The figures fell by 58,000 and 25,000, respectively, from a year earlier, but remain substantial. Among those resting, 35.2% of people aged 15 to 29 and 32.3% of those in their 30s cited "difficulty finding the job they want" as the reason. The share among people in their 30s rose by 5.0 percentage points in a year. The proportion of the economically inactive population hoping to find work or start a business within the next year also fell to 19.9%, its lowest level in eight years, since 2018.

B, in her 20s and a graduate of a four-year university in Seoul, also spent nearly two years applying for open recruitment positions but recently stopped looking for work after repeated rejections. She lowered her expectations to include small and medium-sized companies, but found that most offered little opportunity for career development. "I couldn't find even a job with a future, let alone the kind of job I wanted, so I stopped writing resumes," B said. Meanwhile, more people are choosing to start businesses to make a living. The number of non-wage workers reached 6.625 million, up 71,000 from a year earlier, returning to growth for the first time in three years. The number of non-wage workers in their 30s rose by 55,000, the largest increase of any age group.

The problem is that many of these businesses are not started voluntarily. Among new self-employed people who started businesses within the past year, 21.7% said they did so because it was "difficult to find work as a wage worker," up 3.8 percentage points from a year earlier. A slowdown in corporate hiring and a shortage of quality jobs are pushing people who have failed to find work into self-employment. A lack of preparation also reduces their chances of surviving after starting a business. Among new self-employed people, 47.0% had spent between one and less than three months preparing to start their businesses, while the largest share, 35.2%, said their initial business capital was less than 5 million won. As many as 28.4% of new self-employed people cited a lack of business information and management know-how as major challenges. Among self-employed people considering closing their businesses, 35.8% cited poor business performance or a lack of prospects.

Experts say young people's withdrawal from the labor market should be viewed not as a matter of individual willingness to work, but as a structural phenomenon stemming from changes in the industrial structure. "The recent rise in young people who are resting reflects the effects of changes in the industrial structure, including contraction in manufacturing and construction and the spread of artificial intelligence (AI)," said Ham Seonyu, a research fellow at the Social Security Policy Research Department of the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs. "We need detailed employment policies that take young people's characteristics into account, including support for career transitions in response to industrial changes and the expansion of quality jobs."

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