“The government will help young people enter the job market and encourage long-term employment.”
The government is expanding the target recipients of the youth job encouragement grant and advancing the payment schedule to help young people secure employment early.
The Ministry of Employment and Labor announced on the 13th that through the first supplementary budget for 2025, the budget for the youth job encouragement grant will be increased by 25.4 billion won from the existing 777.2 billion won to 802.6 billion won, and the number of recipients will be expanded from the existing 100,000 to 107,000.
The overhaul will also include university graduates who are awaiting graduation within the beneficiary scope. The government aims to support these soon-to-be graduates entering the labor market in response to the spread of job insecurity among young people and the preference for experienced candidates.
Furthermore, incentives, which were previously paid at 18 and 24 months of continued employment, will now be divided into 6, 12, 18, and 24 months for early payment. This particularly applies to sectors with vacant positions such as SMEs and manufacturing.
The youth job encouragement grant is a program where the government subsidizes a portion of wages for SMEs hiring young persons facing employment difficulties. In practice, it is utilized to enhance employee-friendly welfare, such as raising the salaries of new employees and improving working conditions.
Hong Kyung-ui, employment policy officer for young people at the Ministry of Employment and Labor, stated, “We will actively support young people so that they can quickly enter the labor market and remain employed long term at SMEs.”
