한국 청년실업의 정책에 관한 연구

Abstract

Ever since the shock from foreign currency crisis in 1997, the unemployment issue is emerging as important social problem in Korea. Among them, the youth unemployment, which is in rapid increase, is adding seriousness to the society, and that is because youth unemployment can dramatically reduce long term average income throughout the lifespan through notable reduction of initial income. In addition, though they, if possible, get employed later on after the loss of crucial opportunities to build up human resource values, they are very liable to receive only low compensation according to low human resource value. As such phenomenon reduces the social power in the long term, government of each country establishes suitable youth unemployment policies.

The characteristics of Korea youth class unemployment are as follows. First, in the standpoint of age, the unemployment rate of youth was considerably higher than those of other age group. Second, in educational background standpoint, the unemployment rate of junior college educated youth was the highest, showing the most sensitive response to economic situation. Third, between 1997 and 2000, economy circulative unemployment characteristics were observed, and after that, structural unemployment was shown. Fourth, youth group not only showed high rate of job placement, but also showed high rate of job movement. Among them, the junior college educated youth group showed highest rates of job placement and job movement.

For countermeasures, the Korea government policies for the youth group unemployment can be divided into three classes. The first policy is to create employments, the second is vocational re-education policy to solve mismatched job placement, and the third is the policy of strengthening the collaboration between universities and companies, to properly coordinate university education to industrial demand and connect them to entrepreneurial activities. However, the circumstance is that the youth unemployment policy of Korea is mostly focusing only on raising job placement ratios, and barely has any policy to reduce job movement rates.

In the meantime, the advanced countries like the U.K., Germany, France, Japan and the U.S. that faced youth unemployment ahead of Korea have been carrying out comprehensive policies that reduces job movement rates while raising job placement rates - the policies under which job seekers may choose work place of their preference in the early stage, stabilize there and then they eventually settle down where they can be satisfied rather than the policies that not just increase job placement.

Therefore, in order to solve the youth unemployment problems of Korea more effectively, it is necessary to review existing job placement improvement policies and set up and carry out comprehensive policies to reduce the rates of job movement after job placements. Thus, as way to solve the youth unemployment problem of Korea, the following measures are necessary. First, to encourage the youth employment, the expectancy level of companies needs be adjusted by developing various types of company training programs and providing field experience opportunities during school enrollment periods of youth. Second, while conducting policies to promote job placements like internship - a method to help with stable job placement of youth and reduce the burden of new recruitment education cost of companies, the importance of efforts to reduce job movement along with vocational educations should be further emphasized. Last but not least, there need be established curricular courses that respond to industrial demand through university-industry collaboration strengthening and educational innovation. In other words, in order for companies to reflect entrepreneurial profits on education courses, going beyond only to utilize the human resources that colleges produced, the government needs to prepare institutional measures.