More than seven in ten of the non-regular workers added since 2019 are in health care and social welfare. An aging population has raised demand for care, but critics say job quality has not kept pace.
The Kyunghyang Shinmun analyzed the Ministry of Data and Statistics’ supplementary survey on employment by work type (August basis) and found that non-regular workers in health and social welfare rose from 978,000 in 2019 to 1,867,000 this year, up 889,000 or 90.9%. Over the same period, all non-regular workers rose from 7,481,000 to 8,671,000, up 1.19 million or 15.9%, and 74.7% of the net increase came from this sector. Regular workers rose from 1,195,000 to 1,506,000, up 26.0%, less than one-third the growth rate of non-regular workers.
광고 문의 · 300×250The non-regular share of the sector’s wage earners climbed from 45.0% to 55.4%, up 10.4 percentage points. In 2021 non-regular workers (1,356,000) outnumbered regular workers (1,216,000) for the first time, and the gap is now 361,000. Part-time workers more than doubled from 621,000 to 1,384,000, up 122.9%, lifting their share of the sector’s non-regular workers from 63.5% to 74.1%.
One sector lifting the overall share
The non-regular share of all wage earners rose 2.1 points from 36.4% in 2019 to 38.5%. The Kyunghyang Shinmun calculated that without health and social welfare, the figure moved only from 35.4% to 35.5%, a rise of 0.1 point. This year alone, non-regular workers in the sector grew by 112,000 from a year earlier, more than the overall increase of 103,000, while non-regular workers in other industries fell by 9,000.
The jobs themselves are growing. In September, employment in the sector rose 207,000 year on year, exceeding the overall rise of 113,000, while accommodation and food services shed 97,000 and agriculture, forestry and fisheries lost 94,000. YTN reported that non-regular workers hit a record 8.67 million in August this year with a record 38.5% share, and that the statistics agency named growth in health and welfare as a main factor.
The figures need careful reading. The Kyunghyang Shinmun relayed the agency’s guidance that a parallel survey run under the International Labour Organization’s 2019 revised employment-status classification captured additional fixed-term workers, so changes in non-regular employment should be compared only with figures from 2019 onward. All growth rates here use August 2019 as the base.
Experts point to how care work is structured. Oh Geon-ho, co-chair of The Welfare State We Make, said care services are often delivered case by case rather than through ongoing employment, and called for expanding public care infrastructure and reforming rules to stabilize employment for private-sector care workers. With demand for medical and care services set to keep rising, there is concern that if this structure hardens, the overall non-regular share could climb further.