Baby boomers back in business as companies appreciate diligence, loyalty

Koreans in their 40s and 50s are finding job opportunities at companies that seek employees with certain traits and experiences.

A pet expert educates middle-aged students in a pet sitter training program. [SEOUL METROPOLITAN GOVERNMENT]

On April 18, the disinfection and pest management company Cesco opened a recruitment session in Gongdeok-dong, Mapo District, in western Seoul.

Cesco’s career session, however, was slightly different from the usual fare. The company had limited its recruitment age to those aged 40 to 59, prompting enthusiastic job-seekers in their 40s and 50s to flock to the Seoul 50 Plus Foundation Center, which is operated by the Seoul city government and develops policies for the middle-aged population and creates new jobs.

With younger baby boomers in their 40s and 50s looking for post-retirement jobs, Korean corporations are offering them positions in the face of difficulty in recruiting younger entry-level workers.

A 53-year-old surnamed Park came to the session after seeing Cesco’s recruitment notice online.

Recalling that even as a 30-something, places would refuse to accept a first-stage application, Park said, “It was pleasant to see that this company only recruited people in their 40s and 50s.”

“The job requires someone to visit homes and provide total care for sanitation including pest control so we opened a recruitment session specifically for those in their 40s and 50s,” Ahn Ji-hwan, head of Cesco Homecare’s west Seoul division, said.

“It’s better to hire middle-aged workers, who tend to stick to their jobs, unlike those in their 20s and 30s, who leave for other places when they gain work experience,” Ahn added.

Three people found full-time jobs at Cesco through the recruitment session as of Monday, while two are in the interview process. The company told the JoongAng Ilbo that “it is possible that the two being interviewed will be hired.”

“It was difficult to find a job [because of my age] so I thought it was a very good opportunity to go to a recruitment session held specifically for people in their 40s and 50s," said a 57-year-old surnamed Lee who was hired by Cesco. “I really want to work hard.”

The middle-aged population is being treated well in the labor market due to a shrinking younger demographic and mass retirement within the working-age population.

Korea’s second wave of baby boomers — born between 1964 to 1974, with the youngest aged 50 this year and the oldest at 60 — are entering retirement this year, according to Statistics Korea, with 20 percent of the country’s population to be 65 or over by 2025 to become a “super-aged society” as defined by the World Health Organization and the United Nations.

With the shift in Korea’s demographics, the number of contributors to diverse sectors such as the health care, labor and pension systems is dwindling. The country's working-age population, or those between the ages of 15 to 64, came to 36.57 million people last year but will reduce to 27.17 million people by 2044, according to a report by the think tank Korean Peninsula Population Institute for Future on the population in 2024. This means almost 10 million people of working age will vanish in the next 20 years.

In contrast, the non-working-age population will increase rapidly. Around 8.58 million people will have entered that demographic in the 10 years from 2020 to 2030, according to the Korea Development Institute (KDI).

“Korea’s elderly dependency ratio [the number of people aged 65 and over per 100 of working age] is continuously increasing,” Moody’s Ratings, a global bond credit rating agency, said in its report on Korea’s sovereign credit rating published last year. “Its economic growth engine could lose steam if its working-age population shrinks,” the report said in its evaluation.

With such concerns in mind, all eyes are on the middle-aged population. According to Statistics Korea, there are 20.2 million middle-aged Koreans, defined as people aged 40 to 64, accounting for 40.5 percent of the total population.

“Middle-aged people can provide quality labor in terms of their work proficiency levels, experience and wisdom,” Choi Yoon-sik, director of the Asia Futures HT Institute, said. “Following the fourth industrial revolution, bio and nanotechnology will lead the fifth industrial revolution to bring about an age of a ‘storm of technology.’ There should be policies to train middle-aged people, who are quick to pick up skills, to prepare for future industries as well as address issues that come from the low birthrate and aging society.”

The tide is turning in the job market as well. Of the small and middle-sized companies surveyed by Allwork, an online platform that matches middle-aged people with jobs, 76.5 percent responded that they are willing to recruit from that age bracket. Responses also showed that they were willing to hire people regardless of age if they are able to use computers with proficiency in such programs as Microsoft Word and Excel, are able to analyze big data, or have social media marketing skills.

There is, notably, a company that benefited from hiring middle-aged workers for the right position in consideration of the specific line of work they would thrive in. Almost 27 percent of the work force at SK ecoplant, a construction and engineering company under SK Group, are in their 50s. The company rehires retired employees as commissioned workers when they are needed, and if they are willing to return. The number of on-site workers who are in their 50s or older amounts to 67 percent of the occupation.

“We enhanced our domestic and overseas construction projects by hiring outstanding middle-aged people,” a human resources officer of SK ecoplant said. “The middle-aged generation excels at passing down practical on-site skills as well as communication.”

Even at telecommunications company KT, 60 percent of all employees are in their 50s or older. Worried that almost 1,000 people retiring annually would cause a gap in operations, the company introduced the senior consultant system in 2018. Through the system, older employees nearing retirement share their professional knowledge with the more junior employees. KT benefits by reducing interim periods between employee transfers, and also creates jobs for middle-aged people.

Hyundai Elevator initiated a system to rehire retired employees 10 years ago. The company has rehired 53 people under the guidance of Jang Hae-joon, a professor at the in-house technology education center, who came to the company in 2014. The total number of rehired employees goes up to 60 if the seven from subsidiary Hyundai Elevator Service are also counted.

Hyundai Elevator has also been conducting training sessions for its workers nearing retirement so that they can adjust to their new environment. This was done in consideration of the company’s 600 workers in their 50s, who make up 21.4 percent of the total work force of 2,803 people.

Companies that see firsthand the benefits of hiring middle-aged people sometimes even increase the amount they hire. According to the Seoul 50 Plus Foundation, 68 percent of companies that hired middle-aged people said they were “satisfied” with their work. Out of the responses, 37 percent said middle-aged people excelled in terms of character and personality, citing traits like diligence and company loyalty; while 18.6 percent replied they were good at adapting to the organization; and 6.8 percent said they were satisfied with their low turnover rate.

“It has been proven that middle-aged people actually work better than new, young recruits when performing certain tasks,” Kim Jee-in, team leader of Cesco’s recruitment, said. “There was a case where we asked a worker who had worked at Home Care Pro for over 30 years until the retirement age of 60 to stay on as a commissioned employee because they produced extraordinary results.”

And yet, the recruitment of middle-aged people is still not widely practiced.

"To increase the employment of middle-aged people, it is important to present a logical argument to private companies on why it is a loss for the company to push them out and how hiring them would be beneficial,” Lee Jong-sun, deputy director at the Korea University Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, said.

BY MOON HEE-CHUL,LEE SOO-GI [kim.juyeon2@joongang.co.kr]