According to a recent study regarding Korea’s job market, the middle-aged people in Korea work longer than when they actually want to retire. The FKI Job Hope Center said on the 31st that the average retirement age of middle-aged job seekers was 69.4 years, 2.9 years lower than the average actual retirement age in Korea according to a survey of 1020 middle-aged job seekers aged 40 or older. According to the survey, 7 out of 10 job seekers hope to continue working after the age of 70. However, about 70% of job seekers are in involuntary retirement, the survey showed. Seven out of 10 middle-aged job seekers said they voluntarily retired, including recommended retirement, voluntary retirement, layoffs, contract termination, sluggish business, closure, and management deterioration due to the COVID-19 incident. About 10.7% of the respondents said they had retired. Half of the respondents who said they wanted to re-employment cited economic conditions such as living expenses, personal allowance, and education expenses for their children.
The survey showed that middle-aged job seekers want 2.73 million won per month when they re-employment. This is an increase of 290,000 won from the results of the survey in May 2020.
Medium-aged job seekers want to work right away, but there are not many jobs they want. It will be very helpful if we lower our standards and use re-employment education rather than stick to our field. Thus, countries and states need to provide various educational services to shorten the unemployment period of job seekers and develop their re-employment capabilities.
Writer: Stella Lim
(Photo from Unsplash)