According to the ILO’s recent report, global unemployment is projected to rise in both 2016 and 2017. Although the unemployment rate for the US and some EU countries has decreased slightly, a greater increase in unemployment in emerging and developing economies is still expected to continue for some time to come. What is worse is the increasing youth unemployment rate for people aged 15-29.

The statistics for the global youth unemployment rate is extremely discouraging. The 2015 youth unemployment rates for major countries are: Spain (49.9%), Italy (42.7%), Portugal (32.6%), France (24.5%), Sweden (21.3%), the UK (15.7%), and Germany (7.2%). The youth unemployment rate for the US in September 2016 was 10.3% and 12.5% for Japan in January 2016. 

   In February 2016, Korea’s youth unemployment rate was 12.5% with the number of jobless youths reaching 560,000. This is worrisome for Koreans, especially for Korean parents who have devoted a major portion of their lives to their children’s education. Their agony can be partly soothed by 16,000 foreign-invested companies operating in Korea. They want to recruit smart young workers. Yet they have difficulty in finding talented people due to a lack of labor market information about foreign companies in the host country. So the Foreign Investment Ombudsman plays a role, matching global foreign firms with smart young people. Foreign firms are beneficial to the Korean economy as they contribute up to 6% of the nation’s total employment.

Against this background, the Ombudsman’s Office held a job fair for two days during October 17-18 at COEX. This year marked the 11th anniversary of the job fair. We invited 92 foreign-invested companies to meet the young job seekers. More than 14,000 people expressed their zeal for jobs at the Job Fair and about 12,000 people had on-site job interviews. This number indicates a 10% increase in job interviews over the past year. The huge interview hall of COEX was filled with heat and energy from excited job seekers.

Of the 92 foreign companies, about 30% were Fortune Magazine’s global 500 corporate firms. Through the pre-arrangement by the Ombudsman’s Office, the potential employers and job applicants had exchanged the required information before they came to the job fair. From the job fair this time, we have learned that a large proportion of foreign firms were looking for young people in the engineering field and they preferred job candidates with the characteristics of integrity, diligence, and creativity. In addition, they want new employees to quickly acquire team work skills.

In addition to the Job Fair, we conduct the Campus Recruiting Seminar four times a year at the grand auditorium of the local university so that students of other universities nearby may attend the seminar. This job seminar is aimed at students attending local colleges or universities. At this seminar, the H.R. managers of foreign companies introduce their company to the audience. We do this partly on the equity ground. The students in the provincial area have limited access to labor market information about foreign companies compared to the students at the universities in the metropolitan area.

To meet the pressing needs of both the employers and job seekers, we hold the job fair once a year in Seoul providing the venues and information. However, people raise concerns that holding the job fair only once a year in Seoul seems unfair. They suggest that it should also be done in a major city in the provincial area. So we may hold the job fair twice a year, once in Seoul and the second in a provincial city from next year onward.

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2016/11/197_217232.html