Over 1 Million Young Koreans Despair of Finding Work

The number of young Koreans who are part of the so-called NEET tribe -- "not currently engaged in education, employment or training" -- has surpassed 1 million for the first time. According to the Korea Labor Institute on Thursday, there were 1.008 million people last year between the ages of 15 and 34 who were neither in employment nor in education or training.

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The total number of Koreans in this age group shrank from 14.75 million in 2003 to 13.46 million in 2011, but the number who have given up looking for work rose from 752,000 to over a million over the same period. That means 7.5 percent in that age group falls into the category.

The problem affects more and more women. The number of men in the category grew from 508,000 in 2003 to 626,000 last year, but their proportion fell from 67.6 percent to 62.1 percent. But the number of women increased from 245,000 to 382,000 while their proportion grew from 32.4 percent to 37.9 percent.

The trend appears to be related to better education. "A growing number of women give up looking for jobs as more and more of them get first or second degrees while the number of jobs that meet their expectations remains limited", said Nam Jae-ryang at the institute.

The average age of women in the category is also rising. In 2003, only 12.5 percent of women in the group were between 30 to 34, but last year there were 16.4 percent. In contrast, the proportion of girls between 15 and 19 fell from 16.3 percent to 13.8 percent.