(123rf)
(123rf)

South Korea in 2024 saw a decrease in new job seekers using a government website in all age groups except for the 60 and above group, government data showed Sunday.

There were a total of 4.52 million job seekers on the state-run online job portal, Worknet, last year, according to the Korea Employment Information Service. This marked a 5.3 percent decrease from the 4.77 million the previous year.

By age group, those in their 20s amounted to 1.07 million job seekers, followed by the 60 and older group with 962,173. The 60+ group have been the second most active job searchers behind 20-somethings since 2023. Those in their 40s and 50s had outnumbered the 60-and-over group up to 2022.

The oldest age group according to the data was also the only group that saw an increase in the number of job seekers: up slightly from 959,602 the previous year. This year marked the fifth year straight that the number of 60+ job seekers increased on-year, with the 2024 figure accounting for 21.3 percent of all job seekers,

In January 2025, 29 percent of all job seekers were aged 60+, surpassing the figure of even the 20-somethings.

The recent numbers show that more older people are looking for work than ever before.

South Korea in recent years has seen rapid rise in both the population aged 60 and over and workers in this age group. According to the Statistics Korea data in October, the number of workers aged 60+ surpassed that of workers in their 50s for the first time ever.

The government last year officially announced that it has become a super-aged society ― a society where more than 20 percent of the population is aged 65 or above. Twenty percent of the country's 51.22 million population ― 10.24 million ― were aged 65 or above as of December 2024, according to the Ministry of the Interior and Safety.

Statistics Korea in 2022 projected that the percentage of those 60 and older in the country is expected to surpass 30 percent in 2035, and reach 43 percent of the population by 2050.


minsikyoon@heraldcorp.com