• Journal of the Korean Regional Science Association
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.53-71
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• 2023

This study aims to identify the contribution of factors to employment growth over the past 20 years (1996-2016) for seven metropolitan areas in Korea. For this purpose, we performed a multifactor partitioning (MFP) analysis based on the business survey data provided by Statistics Korea. The key findings of the analysis are as follows. First, over the long run, the region effect is dominant in metropolitan employment growth, followed by the industry mix effect. On the other hand, the dynamic MFP findings suggests that future regional employment disparities are likely to be explained by industry structure. Second, the gender mix and decent job mix effect do not significantly contribute to regional employment growth. However, the contributions of individual factors are not invalid, and it is possible to infer a pattern of declining employment for men-permanent workers and increasing employment for women-contingent workers. These results indicate the importance and necessity of employment policies that can promote structural transition in regional industries and qualitative growth accompanied by employment stability.