KER
Reassessing the Inflows and Outflows of Unemployment in Korea
Jong-Suk Han (Korea Institute of Public Finance) and Jiwoon Kim (Korea Development Institute)발행년도2019Vol.35No.1
초록
Using data from the Economically Active Population Survey from 1986 to 2014, wecomprehensively examine Korean unemployment dynamics using worker flows: inflow ratesand outflow rates. We estimate both flow rates by carefully correcting for time aggregationbias, and quantify the contribution of changes in each flow rate to unemploymentvariability through steady-state and non-steady-state decompositions. Our baseline analysisreports the average of inflow rates as 1.6% and that of outflow rates as 48%. Moreover,despite the small size of the inflow rates, inflows account for 90% of unemploymentvariability. The significant contribution of inflows to unemployment fluctuation stillappears even under a three-state model that includes inactive workers and heterogeneousflow rates by reasons for unemployment. The large contribution of inflows tounemployment changes despite high outflow rates is a unique feature of the Korean labormarket not seen in previous studies of OECD countries.