Self-employed and unpaid family workers account for 32.9% in Jeju, 10.2 percentage points above the national average

[Financial News, Jeju = Reporter Jeong Yong-bok] Self-employed people and unpaid family workers, together classified as non-wage workers, accounted for 32.9% of employed people in Jeju, 10.2 percentage points above the national average. Nationwide, the share of new self-employed people who said they started businesses because they had difficulty finding wage-paying jobs rose from 17.9% to 21.7% in a year.
A comparison of the “August 2026 Supplementary Survey on Non-Wage Employment in the Economically Active Population Survey,” released by the Ministry of Data and Statistics on the 4th, with Jeju’s employment trends released on September 9 showed that of the 415,000 employed people in Jeju, about 137,000 were non-wage workers.
The number of non-wage workers in Jeju rose by 8,000 from the same month last year. They accounted for a substantial portion of the 12,000 increase in total employment over the same period.
Non-wage workers comprise self-employed people with employees, self-employed people without employees, and unpaid family workers who work without wages at businesses run by family members.
Jeju had 111,000 self-employed people, up 5,000 from last year. In particular, 88,000 had no employees, accounting for 79.3% of all self-employed people.
Self-employed people without employees run their businesses on their own, without staff. Since business size and income levels can vary, they cannot all be regarded as small-scale operators or businesses in financial difficulty.
Jeju had both a high employment rate and an employment structure centered on self-employment. In August, its employment rate was 71.9%, 8.6 percentage points above the national average of 63.3% and the highest among the country’s 17 cities and provinces.
Jeju’s labor force participation rate was also above the national average, at 72.4% compared with 64.6%. The labor force participation rate is the share of people aged 15 or older who are employed or looking for work.
Although the employment rate is high, roughly one-third of all employed people are non-wage workers. Alongside expanding employment in quantitative terms, it is therefore important to examine income stability, social insurance coverage, and the viability of businesses over time.

Women’s participation in Jeju’s labor market also expanded. According to the August women’s employment trends released by the Jeju Women and Family Research Institute, the number of women in the labor force was 200,000, up 6,000 from last year. By contrast, the number of women outside the labor force fell by 6,000 to 90,000.
Nationwide, the number of self-employed people rose, while changes were also seen in new business owners’ reasons for starting businesses and how they obtained funding.
According to the Ministry of Data and Statistics’ supplementary survey, there were 6,625,000 non-wage workers nationwide, an increase of 71,000 from August last year. They made up 22.7% of the 29,151,000 employed people, a rise of 0.1 percentage points from last year. The number of non-wage workers nationwide fell from 6,724,000 in 2023 to 6,657,000 in 2024 and 6,554,000 in 2025, before returning to growth this year.
The number of self-employed people with employees rose by 47,000 to 1,481,000. The number without employees increased by 62,000 to 4,303,000, while unpaid family workers fell by 37,000 to 841,000.
Among new businesses, the share of people who started a business because they had difficulty finding a job increased. There were 305,000 self-employed people who had started a business within the past year, down 26,000 from the same month last year. Of these, about 250,000 had no employees, accounting for 82.2%.
The most common reason new self-employed people gave for starting a business was “wanting to run a business of their own,” at 70.8%, though this was down 3.0 percentage points from last year. By contrast, the share who said they started a business because “it was difficult to find work as a wage-earning employee” rose from 17.9% to 21.7%, an increase of 3.8 percentage points. In other words, more than one in five new self-employed people started a business because they had difficulty finding a wage-paying job.
The share of businesses started with relatively little capital also increased. New self-employed people whose initial business capital was under 5 million won accounted for 35.2%, up 3.3 percentage points from last year. This category also included cases where no separate business capital was needed. The shares for initial capital of 5 million to less than 20 million won, 20 million to less than 50 million won, and 50 million to less than 100 million won were 19.8%, 16.8%, and 17.3%, respectively.
The most common source of startup funds was money provided by the respondents themselves or their families, cited by 70.3%. The share who used financial institutions such as banks and insurance companies was 18.9%. Multiple responses were allowed for funding sources.
Nearly half, or 47.0%, spent between one and less than three months preparing to start a business. The most difficult aspects of the process were acquiring business information and management know-how (28.4%), securing startup funds (24.1%), and finding sales channels and promoting the business (23.6%).

The number of non-wage workers varied by industry. It increased by 75,000 in wholesale and retail trade, by 25,000 in professional, scientific and technical services, and by 20,000 in transportation and storage compared with last year. By contrast, it fell by 94,000 in agriculture, forestry and fishing. It also declined by 47,000 in accommodation and food services and by 38,000 in manufacturing.
Across the industries surveyed, non-wage workers in accommodation and food services nationwide had the longest usual average workweek, at 52.5 hours. That was 8.4 hours more than the 44.1-hour average for all non-wage workers.
As for social insurance coverage, 83.3% of self-employed people were enrolled in the National Pension or entitled to receive a public pension, up 1.4 percentage points from last year. The industrial accident insurance enrollment rate for self-employed people with employees rose by 0.4 percentage points to 65.5%.
The desire to find work or start a business among people outside the labor market actually declined. A supplementary survey of the economically inactive population released the same day found that this population totaled 16,297,000 nationwide, up 77,000 from last year. They accounted for 35.4% of the population aged 15 or older.
The economically inactive population consists of people who are not employed and have not looked for work in the past four weeks. It includes students, people focused on household work or childcare, and retirees. They are distinct from unemployed people who are looking for work.
Among them, 3,240,000 people hoped to find work or start a business within the next year, down 61,000 from last year. Their share of the economically inactive population also fell from 20.4% to 19.9%.
The number of people who were not seeking work and were classified as “taking a break” was 2,551,000, down 89,000 from last year. Among those aged 15 to 29 in this group, 35.2% said they were taking a break because they could not find the job they wanted. Among people in their 30s, the same response rose to 32.3%, up 5.0 percentage points from last year.
Nationwide, the share of people starting businesses because of difficulty finding work is rising, while Jeju continues to have an employment structure with a high proportion of self-employed people and unpaid family workers. However, the supplementary survey’s findings on reasons for starting businesses, funding sources, and the specific reasons people were “taking a break” were reported nationwide, making direct comparisons with conditions in Jeju difficult.
The findings also point to issues that Jeju’s employment policy needs to address: alongside its high employment rate and growth in employment, it should consider income stability for non-wage workers, conditions for preparing to start a business, social insurance coverage, and the long-term viability of businesses.


[email protected] Jeong Yong-bok Reporter