The Impact of COVID-19 on Jobs in Korea: Does Contact-intensiveness Matter? / SANGMIN AUM

This paper studies how COVID-19 has affected the labor market in Korea through a general equilibrium model with multiple industries and occupations. In the model, workers are allocated to one of many occupations in an industry, and industrial or occupational shocks alter the employment structure. I calibrate the model with Korean data and identify industrial and occupational shocks, referred to here as COVID-19 shocks, behind the employment dynamics in 2020 and 2021. I find that COVID-19 shocks are more severe for those with jobs with a higher risk of infection and in those that are more difficult to do from home. Interestingly, the relationship between COVID-19 shocks and infection risk weakened as the pandemic progressed, whereas the relationship between COVID-19 shocks and easiness of work-from-home strengthened. I interpret the results as meaning that the pandemic may direct future technological changes to replace tasks that require contact-intensive steps, and I simulate the impact of such technological changes through the lens of the model. The results show that such technological changes will lower the demand for manual workers compared to the demands for other occupations. This contrasts with the earlier trend of job polarization, where manual workers continued to increase their employment share, with the share of routine workers secularly declining at the same time.

Does Learning Matter for Wages in Korea? International Comparison of Wage Returns to Adult Education and Training / YOONSOO PARK

countries, focusing on the wage returns to adult education and training (AET) participation. It is found that the wage compensation structure in Korea is associated mainly with job characteristics such as tenure and workplace size rather than with worker characteristics such as AET participation and cognitive abilities. It is also found that Korea’s AET participation is skewed toward non-job-related AET, relative to the situations in other countries. These findings imply that the link between a worker’s productivity and wage should be strengthened in order to incentivize workers to invest in AET relevant to the labor market.

Factors for the Decline of the Self-employed in Korea: A Search and Matching Model Approach / JIWOON KIM

This paper studies potentially relevant factors affecting changes in the number of self-employed in Korea during the period of 1986-2018. The number of self-employed had increased steadily until 2002 but started to decrease around that time and had continued to decline. The increasing trend in the number of self-employed during 1986-2001 is mostly explained by demographic changes, whereas the declining trend during 2002-2018 cannot be explained by demographic factors. In this study, I consider four institutional factors that potentially affect the decrease in the number of self-employed after 2002: i) a decrease in the job-separation rate of wage workers, ii) an increase in the income tax rate applied to the self-employed, iii) an increase in minimum wages, iv) an expansion of unemployment insurance benefits. Using a search and matching model with the self-employed, I quantify the effects of these four factors on the decrease in the number of self-employed during 2002-2018. Quantitative results show that the impact of the increase in the minimum wage is relatively large, whereas the effects of the other three factors are limited. The increase in the minimum wage accounts for approximately 17.5% (0.169 million) of the decrease in the number of self-employed during 2002-2018 (0.964 million).