Government to Train 100,000 Young Job Seekers, with 10 Major Conglomerates Participating and Operating

The government’s 800 billion won Youth New Deal focuses on strengthening support at the pre-employment stage. The plan is to back young job seekers by providing packages that include education, counseling, work experience, and job training. Expanding work experience opportunities at private conglomerates and internships at public institutions is a key pillar.
The key question, however, is how much of this support will actually lead to jobs. Given the recent deterioration in youth employment indicators and the rise in the number of people who are neither working nor looking for work, whether the program can produce tangible hiring results beyond simply offering experience is seen as the main variable.
■All-out, cross-ministerial youth measures
The Youth New Deal implementation plan announced by the government on the 29th centered on three tracks — leap, experience, and recovery — with a focus on providing practical support before employment.
As companies increasingly prefer experienced workers, the government plans to offer opportunities and experience that can ultimately be used for employment. A representative example is the K-New Deal Academy, which will provide job training and work experience for 10,000 people at major conglomerates. The government said 10 major conglomerates and 30 large companies have expressed interest in operating the K-New Deal Academy.
The government will either launch new youth work-experience, education, and counseling programs or expand existing ones. In particular, it plans to increase work-experience opportunities by 23,000. These include new hires for national R&D project personnel, 9,500 Delinquent Tax Collection Confirmation Form workers and 4,000 Farmland Census Surveyors, an expansion of 3,000 Public Institution Youth Intern positions, and 1,500 additional private-sector work-experience slots. The package also includes expanded recovery support programs such as counseling. Financial support for young people, including the National Employment Support System (NESS), the Youth Employment Leap Subsidy, and low-interest loans, will also be increased.
■"This is not a temporary taste test"
This measure mainly focuses on supporting the pre-employment process. That also means it does not include direct hiring-linked measures. For the government’s policy to be more than a stopgap, it will be important to build a sustainable structure that leads to employment.
The K-New Deal Academy, which aims to provide work experience to 10,000 young people, is also not a hiring-linked program.
Lee Joo-seop, director general of the Bureau of People’s Livelihood and Real Economy at the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MOEF), said, "From the companies’ perspective, if they find talented people during the training process, they will naturally hire them." He added, "But if it is too closely tied to hiring, there are too many constraints on experience and leap opportunities, so we did not make it a direct link."
Asked about concerns that the policy may end up giving young people only temporary work experience and exploration opportunities, he pushed back, saying, "If the government provides funding, companies also have to invest time, effort, and personnel to run these programs." He added, "We did not design it as a sampler, and that view is not correct."
When asked whether the government had set numerical targets for youth job creation, he said, "Rather than setting a specific numerical target and trying to reduce something through employment, the goal is to provide these opportunities to 100,000 people." He added, "We focused more on helping them move on to the next stage."
Ryu Jin, chairman of The Federation of Korean Industries (FKI), said on the day, "The Youth New Deal is a cooperative model in which companies promote training based on on-site demand and the government supports it. We expect it to provide practical training and work experience opportunities for young people preparing for jobs." He added, "This year, the top 10 conglomerates will hire a total of 52,000 people. Two-thirds of them are new young recruits. More jobs for young people will be created only if companies take bold steps and invest. We ask that you create a better environment for business."
jhyuk@fnnews.com Kim Jun-hyuk Kim Chan-mi Jeong Sang-gyun Im Su-bin Reporter