More University Graduates Take Jobs They're Overqualified for

Around 30 percent of college graduates in Korea were forced to find service, sales and other jobs for which they were overqualified because of the slow economy, according to the Bank of Korea.

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The BOK said this trend has become increasingly apparent since the 2000s, when the proportion already stood at 23.6 percent. At the time there were 6.31 million jobs available as 6.33 million university students were nearing graduation.

By September this year, the proportion had risen to 30.5 percent with 10.8 million jobs available for 15.12 million students set to graduate from universities.

The BOK said the number of graduates increased by an average of 4.3 percent annually from 2008 to 2018, but jobs failed to keep pace and increased only 2.8 percent. "The economy is partially at fault, but another problem is the educational structure of a country that produces too many college graduates", the BOK added.

The average monthly salary in the jobs these graduates are forced to accept stood at W1.77 million, 38 percent less than among those who found jobs at the level they were qualified for (US$1=W1,161).

Only 4.6 percent of graduates who are overqualified for their current job then manage to move upward a year later, but 85.6 percent are unable to. The rest simply quit and become unemployed.

In the U.S. the proportion of graduates who start out working in jobs they are overqualified for stands at a whopping 40 percent, but almost 30 percent move up within a year. "This trend of overqualified workers is an inefficient use of human resources and triggers a slowdown in productivity in the overall economy", the BOK said.