Korea’s 2025 youth survey: Time to a first paid job
A first-job waiting-time measure shows how the survey population and denominator determine what the figures can answer.
Updated Nov 8, 2026
Average time to a first wage job
In the 2025-05 survey, people aged 15–29 who had left their final school and whose first job was wage employment took an average of 11.3 months to find that job. The average was 8.8 months for college graduates or above and 16.5 months for high school graduates or below.
People still waiting and people already hired
Time to a first job describes the past experience of people who found work. To examine people still looking, read employment experience, employment rates and unemployment rates with their respective denominators.
University-specific and recruitment-stage measures
The survey mean cannot establish screening pass rates for a particular university, application counts or how much longer any person will wait.