• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.29-50
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• 2012

This paper estimates the effect of minimum wages on new hiring of low wage workers from a time-series. The results indicate that minimum wages tend to reduce the new hiring of low wage workers, in particular, among women, less educated and older population. The strongly negative effect on new hiring suggests that the burden of reduced labor demand arising from higher minimum wages tend to fall mostly upon the unprotected low-wage job searchers due to the short-term rigidity of employment adjustment among the existing workers.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.42 no.2
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• pp.1-35
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• 2019

This paper compares the effects of income transfer and wage subsidy in a simple general equilibrium model. The redistributive effects of both policies are smaller, the more intensive in low wage workers are the luxury goods production. Wage subsidy contributes more to employment and GDP relative to income subsidy, but its redistributive effects can be smaller depending on the elasticities of labor demand supply. More complete empirical analysis appears due on the effects of both policies in order to design an optimal mix of efficiency and equity.

• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.201-223
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• 2008

This paper studies the supply and demand of Industrial Technology Labor-force(ITL) and analyzes the determinate of ITL shortage in Korean manufacturing. We classified the industry into four categories-high technology industries, medium-high technology industries, medium-low technology industries and low technology industries-based on its R&D intensity like OECD. For the empirical analyses we use a survey data collected from 5,703 enterprises. The key findings are as follows: Firstly, a large majority of ITL is engaged in more technology-intensive industries but the categories that are exposed to more serious labor-force shortage problem are medium-high technology industries and low technology industries. Secondly, in the terms of supply factor, the ITL shortage problems are mainly due to the avoidance of ITL jobs. And the demand point, the reason is that the most of ITL are not researchers but production managers. Thirdly, the cause of imbalance between supply and demand of ITL are different by the technological categories. For example, in the high technology industries, the supply factors, such as average wage and turnover rate played more important role in the imbalance. But in the low technology industries the demand factors, such as per capita sales and the ratio of ITL in all employees were relatively much more important. Based on the findings, we discovered some political meanings such as the necessity to plan various policies to resolve the shortage problem of ITL according to the technological categories, etc.

• Korea journal of population studies
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.47-65
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• 1985

Three stages of population growth during last forty years affected differently to the labor force and employment in Korea. The first impact of rapid population growth on the labor force occured after the end of World War II. Sudden growth of population due to repartriation and refugees directly increased the labor force. Deteriorating labor market conditions were caused not only by the explosive labor supply but also by the shortage of employment opportunities due to a lack of productive facilities. This severe excess supply of labor continued until the early 196Os. Population growth in the second stage which caused by high fertility during the post Korean War baby boom period induced an eventual increase in the labor supply with time lag of more than fifteen years. Younger persons born during baby boom period were flooded the labor market. Fortunately, job opportunities were expanded more rapidly than the labor force supply because high rates of economic growth and speedy industrialization were continued until the later half of 1970s. Unemployment, therefore, decreased dramatically during this period. The effect of third stage which is characterized as mitigated population growth due to birth control has appeared in the labor market since late 1970s. The growth rate of labor force has been going down and the proportion of younger workers was also been decreasing. From the early 1980s, furthermore, partial disharmony between supply of and demand for the younger workers is closing up. Less educated younger workers who works at low wage are lacking while more educated youngers who want to work at high wage are being excess, because a lot of younger prefer higher education rather than productive job. It is expected that the structural inharmony will be diversified in the future in Korea. The labor force will be changed to middleaged, highly educated and womenized till year 2000, and, after then, to old-aged. On the demand side, industries and jobs will transferred to be labor-saving and soft. These structural changes of labor supply and demand will not matching in time. Aggregate supply of labor force will be steadily increasing more rapidly than aggregate demand for labor until year 2000, and this trend will continue to the first one or two decades of the 2lth century because the persons born dufing the baby boom pariod are being eligible couples in recent. Therefore, conclusion is that appropriate manpower development policy as well as sustained birth control policy is necessary for harmonizing the structural unbalance and the disequilibrium between aggregate labor supply and demand in the future.

• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.185-207
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• 1996

It is frequently pointed out that the Korean economy, with its scarce natural resources, would never have been able to achieve current levels of economic development without the massive provision of well-educated, hardworking human resources. Throughout the industrialization process ,full-fledged deployment and mobilization of qualified human resources have been the foundation to industrial policy and S&T policy. This paper describes the development of S&T human resources in Korea using various statistics including educational enrollment rates, unemployment rates, the allocation of researchers and R&D expenditures among sectors of performance, educational composition of employment within and across industries, technical human resource shortage rates, relative wage levels of SMEs, and composition of labor force by age-group and gender. While analyzing S&T human resources development, this paper discusses issues such as the mismatched demand and supply of skill and knowledge levels of the highly educated, the unbalanced distribution of S&T human resources between sectors, and the low utilization of the female and aged labor force. This paper suggests that the policy maker applies a hybrid of quantitative and qualitative policies to reduce the mismatches of supply and demand of skill and knowledge levels for each labor market categorized according to supply side.

• Korea journal of population studies
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.58-82
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• 1998

It is usually proposed that job security of old age workers is hampered by the structure of wage increasing with age. This paper sets forth a model to comprehend the characteristic of the old age workers' labor market and policy implications derived from it. In order to stimulate demand for old age workers, policy initiatives should be taken as follows : the wage criteria should be simplified which apply differently from one institution to other; incentives relatively favorable for employing old age workers' in manufacturing sector should be also given to service sectors; employment subsidy or other tax incentives should be given for labor contract after the retirement age; licensing and evaluation system for job ability should be introduced based on occupation & job analysis. To lower the reservation wage of workers, mortgage loan for house and long-term low interest loan for tuition fees should be developed together with stabilization of housing cost. Wedding culture which requires high expense should be amended. Above all, it is necessary to install reasonable social security system. Policy orientation should also pay attention to reduce labor supply of the old aged via aiding old age workers' firm opening and voluntary civil service together with developing various honor programs for members of civil corps.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.168-189
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• 2015

The job creation has been the most pressing issue after financial crisis in many countries around the world. Various policies for creating jobs have been implemented in order to revitalize regional economy in Korea. It has been known that the jobs have been created more in low-wage and part-time work than high-wage and full-time work. The purpose of this study is to analyze the differentiation of startups job in local labor market areas(LLMAs) in terms of job quantity as well as job quality. As the spatial unit, 121 local labor market areas which were delineated based on self-containment rate(demand and supply side of labor market) and numbers of resident workers are used. Also due to difference of the size of employment, LLMAs are classified into 3 groups: large, Medium, small LLMAs. The major results are as follows: First, the characteristics of the job creation are varied among 3 groups in terms of the quantitative and qualitative aspects. Highly waged and highly value-added jobs have been created more in large LLMAs, but full-time jobs created more in small LLMAs. Secondly, the job creation of LLMAs is somewhat weakly correlated to regional economic performance. While the quality of jobs is correlated to regional economic performance in Medium LLMAs, the quantity of jobs is significantly correlated to regional economic performance in small LLMAs. The results of this research give some implications for implementing the effective policy to create jobs related to regional economy, indicating that differentiated strategies for 3 groups of LLMAs is critically important.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.125-162
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• 2001

According to the survey results on non-standard employment, most of the non-standard workers are women and work at service jobs and some jobs that do not require firm-specific skill. Also wages of non-standard workers appear to be lower than those of standard workers by 10~19%. Non-standard workers are very much likely to be excluded from beneficiaries of economic growth because job contents and ability are not important relatively as criteria in determining their basic wage and their benefits are also much lower in severance pay and bonuses, vacations, 4 social insurances, education and training opportunities. Because of very low rate of union membership, the working conditions of non-standard workers are not expected to be improvable easily by unions. It seems that the reason of the demand increase for non-standard workers is mainly because not only an individual establishment demands quantitative flexibility in employment, but also there are tendencies of being smaller in establishment size and of growing service industries macro-economically. The number of non-standard workers are expected to increase continuously in the future, too.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.60 no.3
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• pp.31-58
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• 2008

This study examines applying the elderly poverty labor hypothesis and skill-biased technological change hypothesis to labor force participation rate(LFPR) of older males in Korea. These hypotheses have hardly been examined on the this group. The analysis is based on the data "Summary of economically active population($1965{\sim}2007$)", "Population projection($1965{\sim}2007$)", "Report on wage structure survey($1993{\sim}2005$)" and "Korea Labor and Income Panel Study($1998{\sim}2006$)". The method employed for this study is logistic regression. The main results from this analysis are summarized in five points. Firstly, Korean older males' LFPR have been increasing since 1965 when industrialization was expanding at full steam. This trend has been different from the decreasing trend of industrialized countries. The second finding is that poor older males' LFPR is, on the average, 5.2% higher than that of non-poor older males from 1998 to 2005. The third result is that the non-elderly man has been increasingly positioned at higher grade occupations, while the elderly man has been held at lower grade occupations. The fourth is that labor demand for highly educated workers has exceeded the increased labor supply of the group, while the demand for low educated workers has decreased far beyond the declined labor supply. As a result, college premium has increased from 139% in 1993 to 157.8% in 2005. The final main implication of this study is that the industrialization theory and modernization hypothesis still holds for the LFPR of Korean older males. However, the elderly affluence hypothesis of the LFPR of older males are hardly persuasive in explaining Korean phenomenon. Especially, we find that the elderly poverty is the main mechanism in determining the Korean LFPR in old ages. This supports the elderly poverty labor hypothesis presented in this study. Skill-biased technological change hypothesis partially explains the LFPR of older man. However, we believe that other factors; human capital specially high school education rather than university education and skill required in less skill biased occupations or the poverty; also have taken effect.

• Korean Journal of Labor Studies
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.129-164
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• 2017

This article is an exploratory study on the recent growth of short-hours part-time work in Korea. The short-hours part-time work has been rapidly growing among low-educated women over sixty, particularly among bereaved or divorced women, contrary to the expectation of the government that encouraged the part-time work by means of work-family balance for working mothers or middle-aged women who experienced career interruption. The short-hours part-time jobs are concentrated in social service industry, mostly elderly care service jobs, and their working conditions are extremely poor, mostly low-wage jobs with no social insurances except for health insurance. In this study, we discuss why the short-hours part-time work has grown so fast in Korea since the mid 2000s. Using various governmental statistics, we examine the effects of the labor demand and supply situations during the time period, the legal context that is related with the exempt clause of the labor law, and the institutional context related with the government's public job creation projects for the elderly. We suggest some public policies needed to slow down the growth of the short-hours part-time jobs and to elevate their working conditions.