South Korea saw the percentage of those in non-regular jobs among the total female workers climb to the all-time high, reports The Korea Herald citing research from Statistics Korea. In South Korea, job statuses are commonly divided into regular jobs with permanent contracts and consequent protections for workers, and non-regular jobs, such as temporary jobs, contract jobs and other forms of work with low job security. As for men, the non-regular employee portion marked the highest in more than a decade. Collectively for men and women, the percentage of non-regular jobs inched down by 0.1% to 36.3% in 2020 on-year. A labour research organisation told the Korea Herald that the government “has aggressively increased the number of non-regular workers among those in their 60s at state-funded agencies, who are working as cleaning employees.” In addition, small-sized businesses actively hired those in their 20s in the form of non-regular position contracts in the wake of drastic hikes in statutory minimum wages in 2018 and 2019.

The situation could suggest that the huge allocation of supplementary budgets for job creation during President Moon Jae-in’s term has only created unstable, low-paid jobs for both seniors and young people. This might have contributed to the overall employment rate. But the Statistics Korea data showed that the portion of stable “regular workers” fell from 67.1% in 2017 to 63.7% in 2020. Meanwhile, some government officials claimed that the sharp growth in the number of non-regular jobs in 2019 was attributed to the re-classification of some regular workers to non-regular workers due to a “a fresh standard,” set by the International Labour Organisation.