Reference News Network August 7 report - According to EFE News Agency on August 5, a survey released by the South Korean "Leader Index" consulting firm on August 5 shows that the proportion of employees over 50 years old in large South Korean companies has exceeded that of employees in their 20s for the first time, reflecting the worrying aging phenomenon in the country's labor force.
By the end of 2024, among the top 124 companies ranked by sales in South Korea, employees aged 50 and above accounted for 20.1% of the total workforce, while employees in their 20s accounted for only 19.8%.
This is the first time since the consulting firm started this statistics in 2015 that so-called "generational inversion" has occurred.
The survey pointed out that with fewer new employees being hired and older employees delaying retirement, the aging of the South Korean labor force is accelerating.
This phenomenon is particularly evident in battery manufacturing, electronic technology, and banking: for example, as a semiconductor manufacturer, SK Hynix saw the proportion of employees in their 20s drop by 15 percentage points between 2022 and 2024, while the proportion of employees over 50 increased by more than 8 percentage points.
The "Leader Index" consulting firm believes that delayed retirement is one of the main reasons for the aging of the labor force. However, some analysts say that many South Korean employees are actually forced out of the workforce by the company's "mandatory retirement at 60" policy.
In practice, many companies use a "decreasing salary system": when employees approach the mandatory retirement age, even if their job responsibilities remain unchanged, their salary may be cut by more than half, and their influence may also be weakened.
The survey also showed that due to low pensions and insufficient social security, a large number of retirees are forced to return to the job market. They usually can only find temporary, low-paying, and unstable jobs that young people are unwilling to do, such as nursing home caregivers or security guards. Data show that 61.2% of workers aged 65 and above engage in non-regular work; this proportion is as high as 85.1% among workers over 70 years old. (Translated by Zhang Weiyu)
Original: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7535675746107392555/
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