Seventy percent of university seniors have already given up on job hunt

Economy

Published: 29 Oct. 2022, 07:00

Seventy percent of university seniors have already given up on job hunt

Applicants attend a job fair for the aviation industry at Incheon International Airport’s Terminal 1 on Thursday. The aviation industry is showing a strong recovery as Covid-19 restrictions have been lifted and borders open up. However, young people are struggling to find jobs as major conglomerates are hiring experienced workers. [YONHAP]

Nearly 70 percent of university seniors graduating in March have given up on finding jobs, according to a survey by the Federation of Korean Industries (FKI).

As more and more companies are hiring experienced workers over new recruits, job opportunities for those fresh out of university are becoming scarce.

“Where can newbies build up their experience if companies only hire experienced applicants?” a 26 year-old job seeker, who had been turning in job applicants for the past two years, asked the JoongAng Ilbo, an affiliate of the Korea JoongAng Daily. “The recent job openings from companies only look for experienced workers and furthermore it’s hard to predict when the job openings are announced or how many they plan to recruit.”

In the past, major companies including Samsung, Hyundai Motor and SK would announce their recruitment plans in accordance to the spring or summer graduation period.

The hiring plans included the number of people that each department or business affiliates would be taking on.

Today, hiring notifications have become less systematic and more sporadic.

In particular, major conglomerates have changed the way they recruit employees — instead of hiring as an entire group, each department or affiliate makes its own job notification.

The only company among the top five conglomerates in Korea that still practices the old hiring system is Samsung.

A survey by FKI conducted on 2,469 seniors from 4-year universities found that 65.8 percent have “virtually” given up on looking for jobs.

Thirty-one-point-eight percent said they still submit their applications just for the sake of it as, 26.7 percent said they hardly look for jobs and 7.3 percent said they had taken a break from looking for employment.

Only 16 percent responded that they were actively looking for jobs.

Nearly half said they aren’t actively engaged in job seeking largely because of a lack of skills, competence and knowledge while 38.8 percent cited lack of job opportunities.

“The trend of major companies adopting a year-round recruitment has played a role in the gloomy job prospects,” said a university career support center official in Seoul.

In the survey, 30 percent said the job market for new recruits is worse this year compared to last year. Only 5.3 percent said the situation is better.

Sixty-six-point-three percent said they expect it to take a minimum of six months to land a job while 36.4 percent expect it to take at least a year.

More than 28 percent said companies' preference in hiring experienced workers was the biggest difficulty, while 26 percent cited a lack of good jobs where the working conditions meet their expectations.

Twenty-percent said they are finding it difficult to secure opportunities that would help them build their experience, including internships.

Some 14 percent said that rising inflation, which is increasing the burden on their job preparation including tuition, is a major problem.

Large companies like Samsung are preferred among job seekers, with 20.4 percent of respondents citing that's where they'd like to land a job, followed by slightly smaller companies that are larger than SMEs, at 19 percent.

State-owned companies took third place with 17.8 percent while positions as government employees was 16.2 percent.

Only 11.9 percent preferred SMEs and 7 percent startups.

Last year, the No.1 job that young university graduates wanted to land were at state-owned companies.

The FKI put the change down to young people wanting better compensation and more fairness for the work that they do over the job security provided by public jobs.

“As companies are preferring to hire experienced workers due to the rapidly changing business environment, the extension of in-between period for universities graduates is inevitable,” said Choo Kwang-ho, the FKI's economic research division head.

“Jobs in the private sector should be created by improving the hiring conditions including easing regulations and improving labor market duality [which is the inequalities stemming from the size of the businesses and job positions].”

BY KO SUK-HYUN, LEE HEE-KWON [lim.jeongwon@joongang.co.kr]