South Korean graduates face jobs scarcity

South Korean graduates are now finding it much harder to land permanent jobs, according to a survey by online recruitment web site Jobkorea, of more than 1,100 university students who will be graduating later this year.

Survey results released this week, show that nearly 79% of the respondents to the survey said that they have not been able to land employment before they graduated from college.

Some 1 out of 10 (11%) said they have been hired for permanent jobs; a similar proportion had accepted a fixed-term job offer.

This is a significant decline compared to 2016, when the number of prospective graduates with permanent and contract jobs secured was 16.9% and 22.2%, respectively.

Between genders, male students fared better, with an employment rate of 11.6%, compared to 10.3% among females.

The most employable majors were commerce (13.2%), science and engineering (12.2%), arts (10.2%), and humanities (9.4%).