No. of unemployed college graduates hits 5-year high in Q2

Job seekers look at job postings at a job fair in Seoul, Wednesday. Yonhap

The number of unemployed college graduates in Korea hit a five-year high in the second quarter amid a tightening job market for young adults, government data showed Sunday.

The number of jobless people with a bachelor's degree and above reached 481,000 in the April-June period, up 39,000 from a year earlier, according to the Ministry of Data and Statistics.

The figure marked the highest second-quarter level since 2021, when 521,000 graduates were out of work during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Those in their 20s and 30s accounted for 64.2 percent of all unemployed people with a college degree or higher, with a combined figure of 309,000.

An official at the data ministry said the rise in the unemployment rate suggested that the labor market had been affected by the Middle East crisis in the second quarter.

The total number of unemployed people reached 855,000 in the April-June period, up 11,000 from a year earlier.