Number of college graduates who ‘just hanging out’ hit record high

In the first half of this year, the number of economically inactive people with college graduates or higher on average reached the highest level ever. A job seeker visited a job support center at a university in Seoul on July 21. Yonhap News

The number of college graduates who are neither working nor looking for work has reached a record high, averaging more than 4 million a month in the first half of this year.

The number of economically inactive people with a college degree or higher (including a degree in vocational colleges) averaged 4.06 million people per month in the first half of this year, up 72,000 from the same period last year, according to Statistics Korea‘s National Statistics Portal on July 21. This is the largest number in the first half of the year since related statistics began to be compiled in 1999.

The economically inactive population is defined as people aged 15 and over who are neither employed nor unemployed. It includes those who are neither employed nor unemployed due to childcare, housework, elderly, mentally or physically disabled, job seekers who have given up looking for work because they cannot find a job that meets their requirements, and those who answered “just taking a break” in an employment survey.

The number of people with a college degree or higher who are economically inactive first exceeded 4 million per month in the first half of 2021 (averaging 4.05 million per month) during the coronavirus pandemic, then declined by 136,000 the following year, but has now increased for the second year in a row. This is in contrast to the total non-economically active population, which has been declining for the third year in a row since 2022.

As a result, economically inactive college graduates accounted for 25.1 percent of the total as of the first half of this year, exceeding the 25-percent mark for the first time.

The growth in the college-educated economically inactive population is being driven by those in their 20s. In the first half of this year, the number of economically inactive young adults (between 15 and 29 years old) with a college degree or higher averaged 591,000 per month, up 7,000 from the same period last year. Statistics Korea analyzed that the highly educated economically inactive population includes a large proportion of “short-term economically inactive” people who have worked or looked for work within the past year. They have a large proportion of office workers, simple labor workers, and temporary workers.

On the other hand, highly educated people with specialties or skills tend to remain in the job market and become “unemployed” when they lose their jobs, rather than becoming the inactive population. The growth of the economically inactive population, especially among the young and highly educated, is largely due to a lack of quality jobs.

※This article has undergone review by a professional translator after being translated by an AI translation tool.