Temp Jobs in the Korean Job Market

Let’s say that there are two jobs available now. The first one is a full-time job with 30 million won of annual salary. The other one is a temporary job, which pays 15 million won a year. Which one would a job seeker choose? Of course, anyone would take the first one. The next question is if there is one full-time job that pays 30 million won and two temporary positions that pay 15 million won each, which situation is better then?

Irregular workers will certainly choose the first. However, in the case of young people who are desperate to get employed, they might prefer the second situation because they can have more chances to get hired.

The dilemma shows what the Korea’s job market is facing these days: the choice between job quality and quantity. Its policy to reduce the proportion of temporary jobs results in reduction of the sheer number of jobs rather than achievement of its original purpose to narrow the salary gap.

Dong-A Ilbo and the Korea Economic Research Institute (KERI) studied the report on economically active population in 2001-2006 written by the National Statistical Office (NSO). The result shows that the correlation coefficient between the number of all jobs added together and temporary jobs was 0.82. However, the figure was only 0.22 between the number of regular jobs and all jobs.

The closer a coefficient of correlation is to one, the more related the two factors are. In other words, the decrease in the number of temporary jobs affected the decrease in all types of jobs in the market.

The government has predicted that Korea’s economy will grow by five percent this year, and set a goal to create 350,000 jobs. However, the goal is unlikely to be met with only 300,000 jobs created this year.

A high-ranking official at the Ministry of Finance and Economy said, “The downsizing of temporary jobs is actually limiting the growth of job numbers.”

Dong-A Ilbo surveyed thirty biggest companies in Korea about how they are coping with regulations on temporary jobs. Half of the companies replied and six of them, or 40 percent, said, “There was no increase in regular jobs this year and a decrease in temporary jobs.”

They are downsizing temporary workers in case their dismissal becomes more difficult in the future.

Many economy experts point out that the vague public perception about regular jobs always being better than temporary jobs needs reconsideration.

sanjuck@donga.com smhong@donga.com