Older workers outnumber younger hires in corporate workforce shift

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For Kim Sang-hyun, who landed his first job at a bank last year at age 29, the road to employment was anything but smooth.

“The job market felt completely frozen. A lot of people my age felt the same way,” Kim told The Korea Times. “When I was job hunting, there were many highly qualified candidates. But during interviews, people were often eliminated over small things — like being too nervous or making minor mistakes.”

His story reflects a broader trend in Korea’s corporate landscape, where the workforce is aging as more employees stay on into their 50s and beyond, and the number of workers in their 20s continues to decline.

Amid an economic slowdown and a growing preference for experienced hires, securing a job in one’s 20s has become increasingly difficult in Korea, raising concerns about the prospects for younger generations.

The proportion of employees in their 20s at Korean companies dropped below that of workers aged 50 and older last year, according to data released Monday by corporate tracker Leaders Index — the first time such a reversal has occurred since the survey began in 2015.

The analysis was based on 124 companies — drawn from 140 that submitted sustainability reports — among Korea’s top 500 firms by revenue, all of which provided comparable age-specific workforce data beginning in 2022.

Workers under 30 made up 19.8 percent of the workforce last year, down 1.2 percentage points from 2023. In contrast, those aged 50 and older accounted for 20.1 percent, up almost 1 percentage point.

Job seekers look at recruitment ads at a job fair in Gumi, North Gyeongsang Province, July 16. Yonhap

The proportion of workers under 30 also fell below 20 percent for the first time. This decline is particularly notable given that the total workforce increased slightly from just over 1.09 million in 2023 to nearly 1.12 million in 2024, with only the number of younger employees decreasing.

The widest generational shift was seen in the secondary battery sector, where the share of employees under 30 fell by 9.7 percentage points over the past three years, while those 50 and older rose by 1.2 points — a gap of 10.9 percentage points.

In the IT and electronics sector, the proportion of workers in their 20s dropped by 5.4 points, while the share of those in their 50s and older increased by 3.1, resulting in an 8.5-point gap.

According to Statistics Korea, the number of employed people aged 25 to 29 stood at 2.42 million in the first quarter of this year, down 98,000 from a year earlier. Employment for this age group has declined year-on-year for nine consecutive quarters since early 2023.

Young job seekers without work experience are finding it harder to land employment. A survey by the Korea Economic Research Institute, based on responses from 126 firms among Korea’s top 500 companies by revenue, found that 28.9 percent of new college hires last year already had prior experience. That figure was up 3.2 percentage points from 2023.

A February report by the Bank of Korea noted that more companies are favoring experienced workers over fresh graduates, with hiring shifting from large-scale intakes to year-round, position-specific recruitment better suited for seasoned candidates. The report added that this trend is inevitably weighing on job prospects for young people entering the labor market.

Experts say the aging of corporate workforces is a trend that will continue, and likely accelerate due to demographic shifts.

“It’s only natural that workers in their 50s are becoming the majority,” said Yoon Dong-yeol, a business professor at Konkuk University. “We can’t ignore the rapid population aging driven by the country’s low birthrate.”

That demographic shift is already visible in the broader population. According to Statistics Korea, people in their 50s accounted for 16.76 percent of the total population this year — nearly 5 percentage points more than those in their 20s.

Korea officially became a super-aged society last year, with people aged 65 and older surpassing 10 million and accounting for more than 20 percent of the population — a threshold that signals deeper structural challenges for the country’s labor market and welfare system.