• Journal of the Korean Regional Science Association
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.79-100
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• 2015

In spite of the various government policies to increase the jobs and to improve the employment environment, the unemployment rate has not reduced. The aims of this study are to analyze the structural mismatch(especially geographical mismatch) between job opening and job seeking, and thus to comprehend more deeply the factors affecting unemployment rates of economic regions in Korea. For the period of 2008~2013, the unemployment rates caused by geographical mismatches between job opening and job seeking have been increased steadily. For Chungcheong, Dongnam and Honam economic region, geographical mismatches of low-educated and low-skilled jobs showed relatively quite high, indicating that the job seeker have a strong tendency of preferring certain areas in looking for their jobs. It means that the job seeker can get a job only to move the other areas within an economic region. However, for Capital region, which is the largest job seekers in Korea, geographical mismatches in all types of jobs showed very quite low. So, it is very difficult for the job seeker to escape from unemployment when changing the other areas in looking for a job in Capital region. The results of this study gives an important implication that a nationwide uniform unemployment policy may not be effective to reduce unemployment conditions, and a differentiated unemployment policy should be established in considering the characteristics of geographic mismatches by the types of job in terms of the level of education and skill for each economic region.