This May 27, 2025, file photo shows job seekers checking job postings at an employment center in Seoul. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, June 4 (Korea Bizwire) — The number of employees newly registered for the country’s four major state insurance programs fell to a record low in 2023, marking the second consecutive year of decline, data showed Wednesday.
A total of 26.14 million people were registered as employees in 2023, up 0.3 percent, or 88,000 individuals, from a year earlier, according to the data from Statistics Korea.
Registered employees refer to both wage and non-wage workers who are reported to public institutions and enrolled in one or more of the country’s four major social insurance programs.
While the number of workers who remained with the same employer increased, both “new entrants” to the labor market and “job movers” declined.
The number of employees who continued working at the same workplace came to 18.548 million in 2023, up 521,000, or 2.9 percent, from a year earlier.
In contrast, the number of new entrants — individuals who were not registered in 2022 but joined in 2023 — stood at 3.65 million, down 6.8 percent from the previous year.
This marks the second straight year of decline and the lowest level since the statistics were first compiled in 2017. It also represents the steepest annual drop on record.
The number of job movers — those who switched to a different registered employer — also fell, totaling 3.95 million in 2023, down 4.1 percent from a year earlier.
It is the first time that both new entrants and job movers have decreased simultaneously since the government began tracking such data.
(Yonhap)
