Companies hiring entry-level employees incur costs beyond salaries. They must invest time from senior staff to train new hires, correct mistakes, and wait until new employees can work independently. The preference for experienced candidates is a choice aimed at reducing these costs. As this trend spreads, the question remains: who should bear the burden of creating initial work experience in the labor market?
According to data released by the National Data Agency, the youth employment rate for those aged 15 to 29 was 42.9% last month. This marks a 1.7 percentage point decrease from the same month last year, continuing a 30-month decline. While the overall number of employed individuals increased by 139,000, youth employment fell by 196,000.
When employers demand practical skills from entry-level candidates before hiring, the responsibility for learning shifts to job seekers. This means that the costs of preparing for employment fall on individuals and their families. Young people who need to earn a living face different starting conditions compared to those who can rely on parental support to focus on job preparation.
Extended job search periods lead to income loss and gaps in employment history. The reduction in hiring creates additional pressure on young individuals to explain these gaps in future applications.
The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) complicates this issue further. The Bank of Korea has analyzed that the proportion of young people in new hires has been declining even before the advent of ChatGPT. If basic tasks such as document preparation and information processing become automated, opportunities for young people to gain practical experience will diminish even more.
Government support should focus on clearly delineating the costs incurred by companies when hiring and training new employees. Supporting companies should outline the tasks assigned to young workers, the supervisors responsible for training, and the skills to be acquired. Time spent by skilled employees on training could also be included in the support framework. Young workers should receive compensation, and their tasks and acquired skills should be documented for future hiring processes.
The quality of first jobs must also be considered. In a supplementary survey conducted in May this year, 44.4% of young people who left their first jobs cited dissatisfaction with working conditions as a reason. Support for small and medium-sized enterprises should be linked to improvements in working conditions and training environments.
Policy outcomes should not be limited to the number of participants and graduates. It is essential to track whether individuals remain employed after support ends, whether their responsibilities expand, and if their wages increase.
Even if young people are urged to prepare more, it will be difficult to recover employment rates if job opportunities do not increase. The experienced candidates that companies seek are developed through someone else's training and trial and error. The savings from training today's new hires could result in higher costs for finding experienced workers in the future.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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