Half of job seekers in South Korea were not confident landing a job in the first half of this year mostly due to a grim economic outlook amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to a survey by job search engine Job Korea of 934 people preparing to enter labor force in the first half of this year, 49.3 percent of the respondents said they were not confident in landing a job.

Those who majored in humanities were less confident (55.4 percent) than those who studied science-related subjects (46.5 percent), business administration and economics (46.8 percent) or social science (45.4 percent).

The biggest reason they were not confident about getting a job was that they expected the economic situation to remain stagnant and there would be fewer jobs due to the spread of the coronavirus, with 58.3 percent of those surveyed having said so.

Asked about prospects of the job market in the first half of this year, only 16 percent of the respondents expected the situation to be better than the second half of last year. The vast majority thought that the job market situation would be either similar or worse compared with last year.

As for other reasons for the lack of confidence, some 32 percent said they had fewer qualifications and skills compared to other job seekers, followed by those who cited a small number of high quality jobs leading to a tough competition (27.8 percent) and not a clear goal about getting a job (18.9 percent).

The biggest source of the job seekers’ sense of inferiority stemmed from their academic backgrounds at 39.5 percent, followed by foreign language skills at 34 percent, a lack of qualifications at 29.2 percent and a lack of internship experience at 23.6 percent.

By Ock Hyun-ju (laeticia.ock@heraldcorp.com)