"Studying 12 Hours a Day, Even Military-Style Live-in Training"... Where Desperate Youths Turn To [News File]

"There are welding sequences from number 1 to number 39..."

Lectures start at 9:00 AM, training ends at 9:00 PM, and then studying begins again. This place where meals and lodging are provided while receiving education is not a boarding school or an academy for repeat college applicants, but a live-in employment "boot camp" where job seekers stay. With the youth unemployment crisis growing severe, live-in job preparation facilities have even emerged. Just how severe is the constantly debated youth employment problem right now?

From the beginning of this year through August, employed young people in their 20s decreased by 5.6% compared to the same period last year. Comparing the same periods, the drop is the largest since the IMF Asian financial crisis. A total of 193,000 jobs decreased this year, which is more severe than the drops of 142,000 in 2009 amid the global financial crisis and 111,000 in 2020 right after COVID-19. According to announcements by the Ministry of Employment and Labor, while the overall employment rate remains similar to last year, the youth employment rate alone has conversely dropped by 1 percentage point, and landing a first job takes 1.3 months longer compared to 10 years ago. With the situation like this, back in April this year, the government injected 98.8 billion won in supplementary budget to solve the youth employment crisis and planned the "K-New Deal Academy." Through this, the Ministry of Employment and Labor and some 50 companies are running job-related skill training programs.

The place I visited was LS Future Institute in Anseong, Gyeonggi Province. It is a 3-month live-in course where participants stay at the LS Group training center and learn various skills necessary for their jobs, such as coding, report writing, and interviewing. Because they spend 24 hours a day here, handling room and board while dedicating themselves solely to finding a job, their skills naturally improve quickly.

[Kim Yu-bin (27) / Suwon, Gyeonggi Province: (It has been about a month since you entered the live-in program, do you feel things have gotten easier compared to when you first started?) Yes, when it came to handling data, at first I could only handle data at about an Excel level, but now I think I am at the level where I can completely break down data and extract what I want from within that data.]

From a company's perspective, because they can design the training programs directly, there is the advantage of being able to foster talent equipped with customized job skills.

[Lee Woo-seob / Head of HRD Planning Team, LS Future Institute: We are running programs so that skills recently demanded by companies, such as AI utilization skills, can be somewhat enhanced through this program. From the corporate perspective, it is meaningful in that they can proactively secure prepared talent.]

Even after classes end, they continue their own studies in study rooms such as language study, certificate preparation, and project discussions, so a day here often wraps up only after midnight. Kim Young-sik, who came from Wonju, Gangwon Province, said he is tackling this program with a desperate mindset.

[Kim Young-sik (32) / Wonju, Gangwon Province: I should say I am a bit more desperate. Because, well, there is age. Three months is even shorter than military service, and pushing hard for three months feels like it will prevent any regrets later.]

Cha Seil, a native of Nam-gu, Busan, already has 6 years of work experience in a manufacturing HR team, but thinking that AI skills are essential in a fast-changing industry, he voluntarily re-entered the job market as a boot camp recruit. The job market he returned to has changed a lot.

[Cha Seil (31) / Nam-gu, Busan: You can even tell from recruitment postings, as they ask about AI capabilities, such as what you have achieved by utilizing AI. I am tackling this with a heavy heart, thinking of it as my last challenge. Our ultimate goal is successful employment, and our shared hope is to achieve that ultimate purpose after fully equipping ourselves with work capabilities.]

A "boot camp" is originally a military term meaning a recruit training center. Everyone has entered by taking on the role of an "employment recruit." The average age of the employment recruits who entered LS Future Institute is 28. More than 100 people applied from all over the country, and 31 of them were selected. The competition rate exceeded 3 to 1. When I visited, about a month after entering, 4 people had successfully found jobs and left, leaving only 27 recruits behind. Experts pay attention to the symbolism held by the term "boot camp."

[Lee Joo-hee / Professor of Sociology, Ewha Womans University: It means that (boot camps) require entering like the military and learning all day long. It feels as though job competition has turned into an employment war.]

This is interpreted to mean that "live-in job preparation" is practically no different from the process of becoming a soldier who can survive in an employment battlefield. The young people who visited the boot camp were contemplating and preparing for their future more fiercely than anyone else. However, on the other hand, seeing those who sacrifice their youth to prepare for jobs and statistics about an endlessly freezing labor market, I thought that what is most needed above all is a job market where such extreme forms of live-in job preparation are not necessary in the first place.

※