In this file photo taken Nov. 11, 2020, jobseekers look around booths of a job fair in the Convention and Exhibition Center in southern Seoul. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, Dec. 22 (Korea Bizwire) — The mismatch between jobs and university majors has a stronger long-term impact on wage loss for university graduates than a general economic downturn, the central bank said Tuesday.
The average wage of workers with less than one year of job experience declined by 8.3 percent in 2009, following the global financial crisis of 2008, according to the report released by the Bank of Korea.
However, if the impact of the mismatch between jobs and majors is excluded, wages declined by a mere 2.9 percent.
The report said that if the job-major mismatch rate is lowered, the amount of wage loss should be minimized, even in an economic slump.
The nation’s job-major mismatch rate stood at 50.1 percent in 2016, the second highest behind Indonesia with 54.6 percent among the 29 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member states that participated in the survey.
For South Korea, a one percentage point increase in the mismatch rate led to a 4.1 percent decline in wages, higher than the OECD average of 2.6 percent.
The report noted that based on statistics from 2002 to 2019, the mismatch rate increased particularly during periods of economic downturn.
The phenomenon of mismatch between jobs and majors deepens during periods of economic recession when the university entrance rate is high due to strong educational fever but there is a shortage of jobs, the report added.
Ashley Song (ashley@koreabizwire.com)
