No. of jobless college graduates surges
By Chung Ah-young
The number of people having university degree or higher but who are not seeking jobs has more than doubled over 15 years, data showed Monday.
According to Statistics Korea, the number of those with college diplomas or higher degrees who are economically inactive soared to 3.34 million last year, a 4.7 percent increase from 2014.
The economically inactive population refers to people aged 15 and older who are neither employed nor looking for jobs.
Last year’s figure has more than doubled from the 1.59 million in 2010, as more college graduates have given up searching for jobs amid the prolonged economic slump.
The number of economically inactive college graduates has been rising steadily to 2.07 million in 2004, 3.07 million in 2013 and 3.34 million last year.
“An increasing number of college students are giving up looking for work after experiencing the tight job market. Some of them opt to study at private institutes to seek better chances for getting a job,” an official at Statistics Korea said.
The data noted that the number of economically inactive people with elementary, middle and high school diplomas has slightly dwindled over the last two years.
This pushed up the ratio of the highly educated among the total economically inactive population ― of the total 16 million economically inactive people last year, they took up 20.8 percent, a 9.5 percentage point increase from 11.3 percent in 2000.
In detail, more people with four-year university degrees became economically inactive than two-year college graduates. “It is mainly because the disparity between the jobs the four-year university graduates can land and the jobs they want has widened,” the official said.
In the meantime, the number of unemployed college graduates ― meaning those who do seek jobs actively but are registered as unemployed ― reached 425,000 last year, a 5.5 percent rise from a year ago.
The unemployment rate of those with college diplomas or higher degrees was 3.6 percent in 2015, the second all-time high since 3.7 percent in 2002.