It is budgeted as a youth job program, but what is being measured is not jobs, but satisfaction. The 'Social Solidarity Economy Youth Work Experience Pilot Project,' for which the Ministry of the Interior and Safety (MOIS) has requested 15.6 billion won in next year's budget, is a program that provides a monthly wage of 2.34 million won to 2,000 unemployed youth. The problem is where those jobs come from, and who that money is really for.
According to data submitted by the MOIS to the National Assembly on the 4th, the project places 2,000 unemployed youth (aged 19–34) in 897 social solidarity economy organizations nationwide—including 147 in Gyeonggi, 87 in Seoul, and 75 each in South Chungcheong and South Gyeongsang provinces. The organizations receive a monthly wage of 2.34 million won per youth, corporate contributions for the four major public insurances, and 350,000 won for mentoring and operational costs. The project initially started with a cut from this year's supplementary budget of 19.5 billion won (for 2,500 people) down to 15.6 billion won (for 2,000 people), and the same amount has now been included in next year's main budget. The project description materials submitted by the MOIS outline a plan to inject a total of 89.8 billion won over five years until 2030.
Verification took a back seat. The National Finance Act mandates a preliminary feasibility study for new fiscal projects costing 50 billion won or more. However, this project was exempted from the feasibility study by classifying it as an 'ongoing project' on the grounds that it first started through this year's supplementary budget, despite a document already existing that outlines a 5-year plan to invest 89.8 billion won. During the review of the supplementary budget, the National Assembly Budget Office demanded a redesign of the project, pointing out that its targets and methods overlap with the Ministry of Employment and Labor's 'Social Value-type Work Experience' project, but the MOIS resubmitted it with the exact same structure for next year.
Performance management is also broken. The sole performance indicator for this project is the 'satisfaction level of participating companies and youth' (with a target score of 70). Although it is a job program, there are no indicators such as the job placement rate or the employment retention rate of participating youth six months later. Execution expenditures as of the end of July this year stood at only 11 billion won (70.5%). While the People Power Party's Special Committee on Budget and Accounts requested data on deployed personnel, assigned duties, and plans to hire youth after support ends, the MOIS failed to submit them. The People Power Party has labeled this an 'internal budget ahead of elections' and stated its policy to cut the entire amount. The MOIS counters that 'demand among the youth generation was high during the pilot project process.'
The entire budget follows a similar pattern. The National Assembly's Special Committee on Budget and Accounts held a two-day comprehensive policy questioning session on the 821 trillion won budget bill on the 4th and 5th, during which the People Power Party targeted cash-support budgets such as the 1.7 trillion won Youth Future Savings and the 79.25 billion won Youth Culture and Arts Pass for cuts. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party advocates for increases in job and livelihood budgets to ensure processing within the legal deadline (December 2. While the arguments from both sides differ, the questions converge into one: if the speed at which youth cash-support budgets increase outpaces the speed at which regular youth jobs increase, that budget is not an investment for youth, but a political declaration.
This is not to say that work experience itself is bad. The problem is the direction of the money. While 2.34 million won a month is paid out to fill the gaps in youth job searches, what actually shakes the youth employment ladder is the dual structure of the labor market. The questions the government must answer are not whether satisfaction exceeded 70 points. How many out of the 2,000 became regular employees after this program? Does the responsibility for the 89.8 billion won running without a feasibility study remain with the MOIS? And where will these organizations stand in the next election? Until those answers come out, the label 'youth jobs' does not belong to the youth.
