Generation Z job seekers in South Korea said in a recent survey that they prefer jobs in the private sector to the public center, although a quarter of the respondents they would choose to be civil servants if the pay was higher.
Local job-search platform Catch asked 2,074 job seekers in their 20s or younger about what type of employment they preferred, with 69 percent of the respondents saying that they have no intention to take the state civil service exam. When asked why they do not wish to become government workers, 42 percent cited low wages, and 20 percent said it did not match their personality.
Even if the wages of a both public and private sectors are the same, 53 percent said they would work for the non-government company. Some 26 percent said they would consider civil servant work if the monthly wage for a Grade 9 civil servant was at least 3 million won ($2,158), while 25 percent it has to be at least 5 million won.
The current monthly wage for the starting-level government official is 2.69 million won, while the nationwide average for yearly income was 43.32 million won as of the fourth quarter of 2024 — which is 3.6 million won per month.
The same survey conducted last year found that 78 percent of Gen Z — those born after 1997 — do not prefer civil service jobs, with the respondents also citing low wages as the main reason.
Working as a government official had once been seen as a dream job here, particularly in the wake of the economic crisis of the late 1990s, but the preference for the job has been on a downward trend in recent years.
The acceptance rate at the Grade 9 level was one job offer per 24.3 applicants this year, up from the previous two years but down from 37.2 to 1 in 2020.
Last year's report from Statistics Korea showed that of the 565,000 people aged 15-29 looking for jobs, 23.2 percent were looking to become civil servants while 29.7 percent were seeking to work in the private sector.
Both the government workers and the general public believe low wages to be the main cause the job is losing its appeal, according to a November survey by the Ministry of Personnel Management on 27,000 civil servants and 3,000 members of the general public. some 88.3 percent of the government officials and 62.9 percent of the public said the relatively low pay is why decreasing number of people are choosing to work at state agencies.
minsikyoon@heraldcorp.com
