Foreigners may account for 1 in 10 working-age people by 2042

International students attend the Global Talent Fair at Coex in Gangnam District, southern Seoul, in Oct. 2022. [YONHAP]

One in 10 working-age people in Korea may be a foreigner by 2042 as the population sharply shrinks due to the country's ever-plummeting birth rate.

The forecast was included in Statistics Korea's latest demographic projection covering 2022 to 2042, published on Thursday.

The latest report, based on population data from 2022, outlines three potential demographic shifts in the nationality breakdown.

In a median estimate, the statistics agency projected that Korea’s population, including locals and foreign residents who have stayed in the country for three months or longer, will shrink by 3.9 percent from 51.7 million in 2022 to 49.6 million in 2042.

During the same period, the number of foreign residents is forecast to grow from 1.7 million — accounting for 3.2 percent of the population — to 2.9 million, or 5.7 percent. In the high estimate, the foreign population may reach up to 3.6 million, 6.9 percent of the total.

Meanwhile, the overall working-age population — people between 15 and 64 — is expected to decrease 23.5 percent from 36.7 million to 28.1 million.

Of this population, the number of Korean nationals will dip from 35.3 million in 2022 to 25.7 million in 2042, a 27 percent decline, whereas the number of foreign residents is estimated to surge 60.5 percent from 1.47 million to 2.36 million.

This means that by 2042, 8.4 percent of the working-age population in Korea will be foreign nationals, at least in the median estimate. In the upper estimate, the figure rises to 10.1 percent.

The number of people with a migrant background, including second-generation Koreans with at least one parent who is an immigrant or foreigner, is expected to nearly double from 2.2 million to 4 million.

During the same period, the number of native Koreans 65 or older will more than double from 17.8 percent to 36.9 percent. The elderly population is projected to surpass the 10 million threshold in 2025 and the 15 million threshold in 2036.

Children 14 or younger are estimated to take up only 8.1 percent of the population by 2042, compared to 11.7 percent in 2022.

As the older age group is growing fast and the younger shrinking, there will be 81.8 people younger than 15 or older than 65 for every 100 working-age people, a significant jump from 2022’s 41.8.

In 2023, Korea’s fertility rate — the average number of children a woman is expected to give birth to — continued its free fall to reach another all-time low of 0.72 children per woman, down by 0.06 from a year before. The country’s total fertility rate has been plummeting with no sign of rebounding since 2016, falling below the 1.0 mark in 2018.

BY SHIN HA-NEE [shin.hanee@joongang.co.kr]