Gwangju Employers Federation: "Solving Youth Outflow... Work Experience Project Needs Improvement"

Challenges in Short-Term Utilization, Training Burdens, and Job Skills
"Company Burdens Must Be Eased Through Regular Employment Conversion Incentives"

The Gwangju Employers Federation has proposed improving national funding support projects as a solution to the outflow of local youth, following the decline of Gwangju's population below 1.4 million.

On October 27, the Gwangju Employers Federation issued a press release stating, "The Gwangju Work Experience Dream Project is a job support initiative that provides unemployed youth residing in Gwangju with on-site work experience, guarantees their income, and helps them transition to stable employment." The federation added, "Through recruitment support for member companies, we provide selected youth (Dream Youth) with job experience and assist in matching youth growth with company job openings. However, there are also some shortcomings," it noted.

The federation cited the limitations of utilizing short-term personnel as a key issue. Since the work experience project typically has a fixed duration, companies are often limited to using youth as simple short-term labor and find it difficult to assign them to core tasks.

Additionally, companies face the burden of training and supervision. Time and personnel must be invested to teach and guide youth who lack job experience. This can be an even greater burden for small and medium-sized enterprises that have limited human and financial resources.

There are also challenges due to differences in work skills and adaptability. Not all participating youth meet the expectations of companies, and if some leave early due to poor job fit, companies must again invest in recruiting and training replacements. Furthermore, there are administrative and institutional burdens.

Frequent administrative procedures, which are characteristic of government and local government support projects, require considerable time for tasks such as wage applications, settlements, report writing, and youth management, involving complex and repetitive paperwork.

The difference between subsidies and actual costs can also be a burden when the company’s share of wages (10%) and other indirect costs accumulate on top of the subsidized wages (90%).

In response, a representative from the Gwangju Employers Federation stated, "If youth are limited to simple assistant work rather than building in-depth job skills, there could be criticism that the project fails to achieve its intended purpose," and emphasized, "These limitations should be addressed through policy improvements, and careful consideration and review of solutions are needed to prevent policy leakage in the field."

The representative continued, "To increase youth recruitment, it is necessary to significantly reduce companies’ initial wage burdens by expanding and extending regular employment conversion incentives," and added, "employment retention subsidies should provide companies with incentives when they retain youth who have been converted to regular employment for a certain period, thereby encouraging sustained hiring."

The representative also said, "Support is needed to compensate companies for the time and effort invested in youth training and to reduce the burden of managing unskilled youth," and continued, "by providing basic job competency training for each position in advance, either independently or in cooperation with specialized institutions, companies should be able to reduce the time spent on training."