The number of South Koreans who are elderly are still working has gone up a lot, according to Korea’s Korean Statistical Information Service.
As of January 2024, 1.55 million people in South Korea aged 70 and above held jobs. This made up 24.5% of the people in that age group. This number is 11.4% more than the 1.39 million which was recorded last year.
The share of older workers in the working population in the country has gone up as more older people join the workforce. In 2024, people over 70 made up 5.6% of the population, up from 5.1% in January 2023.
Around half of the workers were over 70 years old and still going to work.
This equates to 750,600 individuals, or 18.8% of the 75+ age group.
Furthermore, a labour sector analysis found that approximately 30% of adults over the age of 70 work in forestry, fishing, and agriculture. The next most common fields are social work and the service sector, which together employ 22.8% of the working population.
42.1% of the elder workers, according to the Ministry of Labour, were “simple labourers,” meaning they were not specialists and required little training. However, 29.6% of them were experts in gardening, farming, and fishing.
In accordance with the trend of more elderly individuals working, South Korea’s society is rapidly ageing. According to the Korea Herald, 20.1% of job seekers on the government-run Worknet platform last year were 60 years of age or older, according to newly released data from the Korean Statistical Information Service.
