Korea’s Overlapping Job Creation Plans

“Creating 800,000 social service jobs by 2010” (Ministry of Planning and Budget, 2007); “creating 600,000 jobs for women by 2010” (Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, 2006); “creating 600,000 new jobs in the science and technology fields in 5 years” (Ministry of Science and Technology, 2006); and “creating 270,000 jobs in the IT sector by 2007” (Ministry of Information and Communication, 2004) are some of the job creation plans of ministries for the past few years. However, most of the goals overlap, so not many jobs are expected to be created.

Dong-A Ilbo found out on Wednesday that 2.27 million jobs should be created, or 507,500 by this year, and 440,000 each year from next year to 2010 according to the plans of government ministries.

This is more than the 295,000 jobs created last year, and the government’s goal of 300,000 jobs this year. The number of jobs the government is planning to create is more than the number of jobs that are to be created by private companies and the Korean economy as a whole.

“295,000 jobs were created last year when the growth rate was 5.0 percent. Therefore, the economic growth rate needs to be at least 7-8 percent to create more than 440,000 jobs. The plans announced by ministries are unrealistic,” said economic experts.

“Each ministry adds the plan of other ministries to emphasize their job creation plans,” said a government official.

In fact, among the 201,059 social service jobs, 40 percent, or 81,808 jobs, are already included in the 600,000 jobs for women that the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family announced last year. The Ministry of Information and Communication explained that their goal overlapped with the goal of MOST.

It is problematic that the goals are unrealistic from the start, however. The MIC planned to create 270,000 jobs by this year from 2004, but it only achieved 14percent of that goal, or 39,000 jobs, and it looks impossible to achieve even 20 percent of its goal by this year.

“Among the 270,000 jobs, 246,000 jobs are to be created by private companies, but the IT industry was sluggish,” said a source at the MIC. That is, the government’s goal was high because it was added with the jobs that are naturally created by private companies.

Creating 200,000 social service jobs each year is unlikely. The total number of new jobs is not expected to increase because people are merely changing their jobs to social service jobs.

sanjuck@donga.com ddr@donga.com