Job Sharing Ends Up Not Easing Youth Joblessness
By Yoon Ja-young
Staff Reporter
Yang Youn-sang, a junior at a prestigious university in Seoul, can't sleep at night. He thought he would be able to get a job and lead a happy life upon completion of his two-year obligatory military service, but with the days numbered before his discharge, he is under pressure due to dim prospects of getting a decent job.
Nowadays, it is becoming as difficult as ever for young people here to get jobs. The government has been pressuring employers to adopt internship programs to absorb the jobless young, but it hasn't been helping much.
According to the National Statistical Office (NSO), the number of young people aged between 15 and 29 with jobs dropped by 112,000 in July from a year ago ― continuing a 56-month slide since December 2004.
The employment rate for this age bracket fell to 41.8 percent from 45.1 percent of December 2004, and the economic participation rate has also dropped by nearly 4 percent.
The government has been pressuring employers to increase internship programs. The measure helped push down the unemployment rate as interns are not categorized as ``unemployed,'' but the tentative solution hasn't helped youths much. By the end of the internships, most of them are still left jobless.
The public sector, including government and state enterprises, has hired around 10,000 youths as interns. Some of interns are given advantages in the hiring process, but most simply have to leave at the end of their programs.
Interns at private companies don't fare any better.
Some banks, for example, have hundreds of interns working in their programs.
Kookmin Bank hired 850 interns in February. When their contract ended, some of them asked for an extension of their contract. The bank extended the internship program for 158 of them until the end of September. They are expected to receive some advantages during regular recruitment, but the bank doesn't have any concrete plans for recruitment yet.
Shinhan Bank, meanwhile, had considered from the beginning that most of interns would be likely to turn jobless again at the end of the program. It provided an internship program for 500 youths, in which interns work for six months, but only three days each week.
``It was highly likely that they would go back to their previous status at the end of the program. We regard the internship program as chance to prepare for the job market and experience what work at the bank is like,'' said a spokesperson at Shinhan Bank.
Hence, over half of the interns quit in the middle of the program. Some quit upon securing full-time work elsewhere.
``We don't officially give advantages to interns when they apply for full-time jobs. However, their experience as interns may be taken into account at the interview or resume screening.
Shinhan's internship program ended on July 24.
Some of banks were criticized for abusing their internship programs. A local bank, for example, hired 100 interns in June, but many of them quit as the bank required them to get subscribers to its credit card, deposits, loans and other services.
Many interns also complain that they are not learning anything about work. They simply idle away time or do very simple jobs like copying or making coffee.
Some companies did hire many of their interns as regular employees. Goodmorning Shinhan Securities is one of them. The securities company had 75 people in their internship program last year. Among them, 35 were hired as regular employees.
``We exempted the interns from the resume screening process,'' said a spokeswoman. ``We didn't give any special preference to intern, nor were we set to hire a certain portion of them as regular employees. However, the internships helped them get full-time jobs in the end.''
``They came to understand our business better, and know our people better. That seems to have helped them,'' she said.