People commute to work in Seoul on Thursday. (Yonhap)

Nearly a quarter million South Korean young people have been unemployed for at least three years, recent government data showed Thursday, with over 80,000 saying they were neither looking for work nor receiving education related to their career during the period.

According to Statistics Korea, 238,112 people aged 15-29 were found not to be working at least three years after graduating from their most recent educational institution, as of May this year. Of those, 82,545 said they weren't doing anything in particular to search for work, saying they were "just spending time at home."

Another 68,886 said they were studying for employment exams, 35,243 said they were doing housework or raising children, and 10,880 said they were studying to get a higher education.

The data hinted that a growing number of young people may be getting discouraged by the continued failure to get a job. In contrast, of those who had been unemployed for under six months, only 26.4 percent said they were not looking for a job.

But the figure surged to 34.2 percent among those who had failed to get hired for three years or more.

On the contrary, the percentage of those who were preparing to get hired -- including studying for employment-related exams, going to interviews and receiving job-related training -- peaked to 54.9 percent among those who had been unemployed for from six months to a year, and dropped consistently to 34.2 percent for those who had been unemployed for at least three years.

The number of young Koreans unemployed for at least three years marked the highest figure since May 2021 -- when there were around 278,000 young people unemployed for at least three years. The figure had been on the decline since 279,000 in May 2020, but has rebounded this year.

The number of young Koreans who gave up looking for a job this year was lower than the 2021 and 2022 figures, but substantially higher than the 2018 and 2019 figures of 54,000 64,000 before the COVID-19 pandemic.

The surge in the number of economically inactive young people is in stark contrast to decrease in the overall population of young people in the same period, indicating that unemployment for young people is likely a more severe problem than what appears on paper. There were 9.07 million people aged 15-29 in May 2019, but the same population fell to 8.17 million in May 2024.

Korea saw its first population decrease in 2021 amid the falling birth rate since it started keeping official records in 1949.