Nearly 30% of Doctoral Degree Recipients Unemployed Last Year
Highest Rate Since Survey Began in 2014
A survey revealed that 3 out of 10 doctoral degree recipients last year were unemployed. In particular, nearly half of the young doctors under the age of 30 were without jobs. This is the highest rate since the statistics began.
On the 2nd, the National Statistical Office's National Statistics Portal released the results of the "2024 Domestic New Doctoral Degree Recipients Survey." The survey was conducted by the Korea Research Institute for Vocational Education and Training targeting all doctoral degree recipients who graduated nationwide universities in August of the previous year and February of the current year.
Among 10,442 respondents, 70.4% were currently employed or had secured employment. The unemployed (job seekers) accounted for 26.6%, and the economically inactive population, neither employed nor unemployed, was 3.0%.
The total proportion of those unemployed or not seeking jobs was 29.6%. When the related survey started in 2014, it was 24.5%, and it remained in the mid-20% range until 2018 at 25.9%. However, it jumped to 29.3% in 2019 and reached an all-time high last year.
By age group, young new doctors especially faced difficulties in job searching last year. Among 537 respondents under 30 who obtained doctoral degrees last year, 47.7% were unemployed, which was also the highest since the survey began.
Among them, 45.1% were unemployed despite job-seeking activities. 2.6% were economically inactive without proper job-seeking activities.
By gender, the unemployment rate among female doctors was 33.1% out of 4,154, higher than 27.4% among males (6,288).
By major classification, Arts and Humanities had the highest unemployment rate at 40.1%, followed by Natural Sciences, Mathematics and Statistics (37.7%), and Social Sciences, Journalism and Information Studies (33.1%).
Majors in Health and Welfare (20.9%), Education (21.7%), and Business, Administration and Law (23.9%) had relatively higher employment rates and lower unemployment rates.
Regarding "considerations when choosing a workplace," 30.2% of 4,983 respondents selected relevance to their major. Salary (26.1%) and job security (16.9%) were the next most important factors.
As for the degree of relevance between actual work and major, 89.0% responded "high," while the remaining 11.0% answered "low." It is analyzed that 1 in 10 people were employed without utilizing their doctoral major.
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