Gov’t Employment Reduction Takes Toll on Job Applicants

Local governments are also set to reduce the number of new recruits, in an attempt to tune in to the central government’s drive to reduce its size. This is bad news to many job seekers who were preparing to be public servants.

In line with the central government’s new policy to cut the number of public servants at local governments by 10,000, local governments are trying to hire fewer people instead of dismissing incumbent employees.

According to the Ministry of Public Administration and Security and local authorities on Sunday, many local governments will soon announce measures to reduce their workforce by 5 to 10 percent.

Local governments, including cities of Busan, Ulsan and Daejeon, and Gangwon and South Chungcheong provinces will cut back the number of employees by not replenishing the vacancies caused by retirement.

Daejeon City decided to lower the number of new employees originally planned as 75 to 51 to be recruited at the end of May. Their hiring plan for the second half will also scale down from 75 to 24. All in all, Daejeon will employee 50 percent less than they had planned earlier. Within the two years’ time, by when the term of incumbent Mayor Park Seong-hyo expires, the city intends to decrease the number of employees from 2,300 to 2,100 by 9 percent.

A source from the ministry said, “The total number of recruits for local governments is set at 9,636 this year, but some cities and provinces will have to start reducing the number from this year.” He added, “Reduction of hiring will be in full swing from next year.”

This means even smaller chances of success for hundreds of thousands of public servant exam applicants.

According to the National Statistical Office last July, the number of people who were preparing for the exams to select regular public servants amounted to 196,000.

Some point out that the Lee Myung-bak administration is working on reducing the size of local governments that were puffed up during the previous Roh Moo-hyun administration, and the public servant exam applicants are innocent roadkills.

The number of local government employees increased by 13.8 percent from 248,141 in 2002 to 282,476 at the end of last year.

The central government is going to reduce new recruits as many as possible to achieve the goal of “10 percent budget cut.”

A source from the Ministry of Strategic Planning and Finance said, “The big hiring plan made last year is in the implementation process this year. But from next year, the central government will hire less. New hiring will only occur when it is unavoidable.”

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