Nearly 1 year needed for graduates to get first job: data

It takes nearly one year for college graduates to get their first job, data for this year showed Tuesday, marking the longest period ever. For those aged 15 and 29, the time gap between their graduation and getting a job came to 11.5 months on average as of May 2024, up 1.1 months from a year earlier, according to the data by Statistics Korea. This year's figure marked the longest amount of time since the agency began compiling the data in 2006. In detail, 47.7 percent of the young employees needed less than three months to secure their first job, and 30.1 percent spent more than one year. It took more than three years for 9.7 percent of the young people, up from last year's 8.4 percent. For college graduates, the average period needed to be hired stood at 8.3 months this year, up from 8.2 months. The period for noncollege graduates went up to 17.6 months from last year's 14.8 months, the data showed. "The growth came as an increasing number of young people have spent more time preparing to get a job or to enter graduate schools or higher education institutions amid unfavorable job market conditions," an agency official said. In this June 23, 2024, file photo, a jobseeker studies at a private institution in Seoul. (Yonhap) Of the country's 8.17 million people in the age group, 50.3 percent were engaged in economic activities as of May. The number of youth employees dropped by 173,000 on-year to 3.83 million, while the number of the unemployed rose by 28,000 to 276,000. Of the economically inactive young people, 565,000 people, or 13.9 percent, said they were preparing for a job, marking the third consecutive yearly fall. Some 29.7 percent of the jobseekers said they want a job at private companies, while 23.2 percent said they were preparing to take civil service examinations. It marked the first time that the number of those who want a job at private firms surpassed those who want to become public officials, according to the agency. Source: Yonhap News Agency