Seoul: The number of employees newly registered for the country's four major state insurance programs fell to a record low in 2023, marking the second consecutive year of decline, data showed Wednesday.
According to Yonhap News Agency, a total of 26.14 million people were registered as employees in 2023, representing a modest increase of 0.3 percent, or 88,000 individuals, from the previous year, based on data from Statistics Korea. Registered employees include both wage and non-wage workers who are reported to public institutions and enrolled in one or more of the country's four major social insurance programs.
While the number of workers who remained with the same employer increased, both "new entrants" to the labor market and "job movers" experienced a decline. The data revealed that the number of employees who continued working at the same workplace reached 18.548 million in 2023, up by 521,000 or 2.9 percent from the previous year.
In stark contrast, the number of new entrants, defined as individuals who were not registered in 2022 but joined in 2023, stood at 3.65 million, reflecting a decrease of 6.8 percent from the previous year. This marks the second straight year of decline and the lowest level since the statistics were first compiled in 2017, representing the steepest annual drop on record.
Additionally, the number of job movers, individuals who switched to a different registered employer, fell to 3.95 million in 2023, down by 4.1 percent from the previous year. This marks the first time that both new entrants and job movers have decreased simultaneously since the government began tracking such data.