제 10 호 Hardships of University Graduates
What is "NEET"?
Kicker: SOCIETY (SOCIAL WELFARE)
Hardships of University Graduates
What is “NEET”?
Yeong-Jin Choi, Reporter
Do you agree with the society’s perception of college and university graduates getting a job is becoming harder and harder? Hardships of university graduates getting a job was there before COVID-19. After the Corona virus, university students are feeling depressed that opportunities and speculations to get a job like doing volunteer work, studying abroad, taking part in extracurricular activities, and doing volunteer work abroad have been banned. Therefore, I would like to share how serious university graduates’ unemployment crisis is and illustrate how to improve the current situation.
What is “NEET”?
What is “NEET”? NEET is an abbreviation for not in education, employment, or training. The term is used by the government to describe a young person who is no longer in school and does not have a job or is not training to do a job. Shortly saying, NEET is a word to classify young people who are both not ready and not wanting to be employed. The classification originated in the United Kingdom in the late 1990s, and its use has spread in varying degrees to other countries and regions including Japan, South Korea, China, Taiwan, Canada, and the United States. In the United Kingdom, where the term first originated, the classification comprises people aged between 16 and 24. Youth unemployment has been an escalating problem in the United Kingdom since 2005.
Current Status of Youth Unemployment
The Causes of Youth Unemployment of the United Kingdom
Experts presume that the causes of youth unemployment are these: a lack of jobs, young people lack skills needed for work, credentialism*, lack of qualifications or appropriate qualification, rise in retirement age, recruitment methods, poor vocational* options, welfare, gaps between education and employment, employers prefer to work with experienced staff, young people’s expectations, lack of accurate and engaging career information, employment legislation*, employers perceptions of young people, lack of quality vocational pathways*, workfare, and so on.
The Solutions of Youth Unemployment of the United Kingdom
The United Kingdom is trying to fix the unemployment by youth engagement activities. The experts believe the solutions to youth unemployment are these: increase employer support, reduce employment legislation that creates a barrier for employers to work with young people, help employers to recognize the value of skills and behaviors as well as academic criteria, ensure education priorities employability skills and career learning for young people as well as quality academia, improve the quality and relevance of vocational routes and qualifications, ensure career education is aligned with the needs of the economy, local labor market information and is motivation and inspirational, help young people to value work of all entry levels to raise aspirations that there are many good jobs that are overlooked, create a welfare system that supports young people to find employment or training opportunities, and improve the coordination of all of the youth engagement activities so that information can be shared, and so that young people will benefit from collaboration and improved signposting.
OCED Handling Youth Unemployment
How are other countries handling youth unemployment? OCED sets out a toolkit measures that countries and stakeholders can take to tackle high youth unemployment and underemployment and to promote better employment outcomes for young pole in the long run by equipping them with relevant skills and removing barriers to their employment. They have an Action Plan for Youth to tackle the current youth unemployment crisis and to strengthen the long-term employment prospects of youth. OCED can help working with countries to develop national and local action plans and organizing workshops on good practice to implement this plan.
Studies of Korea’s Youth Unemployment
The unemployment rate remained unchanged at 10 percent in April from 10 percent in March of 2021. This rate is remarkable as it has risen a 1.8 percent point since December 2020. The study claims that the NEET rate reached 18.4 percent in Korea in 2017, compared with the 13.4 percent cross-country OCED average. The study also says that one of the reasons for the elevated share of college or university graduates who are NEET is that they may take breaks to attend informal educational institutions. It adds that NEETs are actually preparing for university or company entry exams or following informal education courses such as language courses to prepare for their futures. Other studies, however, indicate that the major reason of youth unemployment is because of not recruiting new employees in the period. The result shows that the country’s job market will worsen, particularly for young people, since 41.3 percent of the large firms had no plans of opening up jobs or had yet to confirm their recruiting plans for the first half of the year.
South Korea’s Youth Unemployment Rate
Current Situation of South Korea’s Youth Unemployment and Its Cause
South Korea was among the few countries without a youth unemployment problem prior to the 1997 economic crisis. However, the problem first appeared in 1998, in the aftermath of the crisis. The main causes of the youth unemployment are these: cutting costs and replacing labor with technology in big firms, the size of the youth population is decreasing, but the trend is much slower than the decreases in the number of jobs, meaning more young people are without jobs. The educational upgrading among Korean youth is one. As more 25 to 29 age group of young people stayed in university, the proportion of young people participating in the labor market declined. Factors like the decline of the economic growth rate, increase of part-time workers, low payment employee rate, shortage of superior occupations, and a serious gap between big firms and small firms have caused severe youth unemployment too. Experts pointed out that while the United States and other OECD countries have been improving youth unemployment rates since the economic depression in 2008, the Korean situation has gotten worse.
Picture of Youth Unemployment
Solutions Government Offers and Experts' Recommendations
The government of South Korea has announced The Solution of Youth Unemployment in September 2003 which suggests direct occupation production, reorganizing education system, and supporting workshops and vocational trainings. First, to produce direct occupations, government suggests vocational trainings such as expansion of social occupations, interning abroad, and volunteer works overseas. Government also provides programs that can help people search for their preferences on their careers. Nevertheless, the experts point out that the policies the government is promoting for the decline of youth unemployment are somewhat more advanced than the past, but at the same time hard to carry out consistently and carry obvious limitations of offering differentiated occupation services. Therefore, they suggest a partnership between school, local communities, enterprises, labor unions, as well as central and local government to promote policies.
The major causes of youth unemployment are lack of jobs, gaps between big firms and small firms, and companies’ preferences of experienced employees. Nonetheless, I suppose that it is important for the government and enterprises to offer more opportunities to the youth. If the situation lasts a long time, it will become a big loss for both the youths and for the society. Expecting for the situation to improve, I hope for the best for Sangmyung students who are preparing to get a job in the middle of COVID-19.
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