Employment market for college graduates frozen

College students about to graduate are worried by the depressed employment market that has resurfaced for the first time since the economic crisis of 1997.

Large corporations that announced large-scale hiring at the beginning of the year when the economy was on an upswing have quietly scaled back their plans since July. As of Friday, there were only 2,000 spots for college graduates at major corporations and institutions for the rest of the year. Hirings at bankrupt and near-bankrupt companies have been stopped and demand for staff at wireless and fixed telecom companies has also frozen.

The situation at information and technology (IT) companies, which have been big employers since 1999, is the same. The number of employees at Daum, Lycos, Naver, Netian and other major dot-com companies has stood still for the last three months and new hirings are virtually non-existent.

Many of the large corporations have practiced new hiring methods since last year, hiring only a few experienced workers on a need-basis, further narrowing the job market for new college graduates. Kyung Hee University Business Management Research Institute explained that among the 10,000 that found employment in the latter half of the year, the ratio of new workers to experienced workers stood at 55 to 45, showing that about half the openings were for those with experience.

As the employment rate at most colleges has dropped to about 30 percent, increasing numbers of students are taking leaves of absence. A psychology major at Korea University who will graduate next February said that the few requests for recommendations are heavily concentrated in a few popular departments. Those in liberal arts departments do not get any requests for recommendations, the student said. ¡°Many are waiting for the economy to recover and preparing to go abroad for further studies. I also have many friends who are taking leaves of absence to prepare for civil service and state exams,¡± he said.

There are many major universities that have had more than 30 percent of their students file for leaves of absence in the second semester. At Sogang University, 3834 or 35.6 percent of the 10,778 students are on leaves of absence. Of the 22,360 students at Hanyang University, 35.5 percent or 7,938 are on leave. At Yonsei University, 7,137 students or 28.9 percent are on leave.