Gov't jobs task force met only once this year despite pledge of monthly meetings

The pan-government jobs task force, launched to provide ongoing monitoring of the labor market, has met only once this year — despite a pledge at its inception to convene monthly, it has emerged.

Critics say the government's employment control tower has failed to function as intended, with an emergency meeting chaired by the deputy prime minister called only after data showed the number of employed people had begun to fall.

According to the Ministry of Employment and Labor on Monday, the pan-government jobs task force was designed when it launched in December 2022 as a deputy minister-level body co-chaired by the first vice minister of the Ministry of Finance and Economy and the vice minister of the Ministry of Employment and Labor. The government said at the time it would hold monthly meetings "to proactively respond to uncertainty in the labor market."

In practice, however, the task force has not operated as planned. The first meeting under the new administration was held only in September last year — roughly three months after the government took office — under the name "first jobs task force meeting of the new administration."

At the second meeting, held in November of the same year, the Finance and Economy Ministry's vice minister attended, but the Labor Ministry — the agency directly responsible for employment policy — sent employment policy director Lim Yeong-mi in place of Vice Minister Kwon Chang-jun. The vice minister of the ministry at the center of the task force's mandate was absent from a pan-government deputy minister-level meeting on jobs.

In government meetings, the seniority of attendees signals policy priorities. Observers note that the vice minister's absence carries particular symbolic weight, given that the jobs task force is meant to serve as a coordinating control tower for employment issues across ministries.

This year's first jobs task force meeting was not held until May 13. The monthly-meeting commitment made at the task force's launch has in effect become a dead letter, critics say.

Clear warning signs have recently emerged in the labor market.

The Ministry of Statistics' May 2026 employment trends report showed the number of employed people last month stood at 29.12 million, down 40,000 from the same month a year earlier — the first decline since December 2024. Youth employment among those aged 15 to 29 dropped by 255,000, and the youth employment rate fell 2.4 percentage points to 43.8 percent. The broad youth unemployment indicator — the supplementary labor underutilization measure — stood at 16.6 percent, meaning more than one in six young people was effectively unemployed or underemployed.

The government moved belatedly to step up its response. Rather than convening the previously scheduled jobs task force meeting, it held an emergency meeting of employment-related ministers on June 11, chaired by Deputy Prime Minister and Finance and Economy Minister Koo Yun-cheol. The following day, it held a combined emergency economy headquarters meeting and economic ministers' meeting to discuss youth employment measures, while the Labor Ministry convened its own emergency employment situation review meeting chaired by Vice Minister Kwon Chang-jun.

In effect, the jobs task force — the standing monitoring body — had gone largely dormant, and a series of emergency ministerial and vice-ministerial meetings were called only after the decline in employment became a reality.

A Labor Ministry official said the government had "continuously monitored the employment situation through the emergency economy ministers' meeting and other channels beyond the jobs task force," adding that it had "regularly held regional employment situation review meetings chaired by the minister since the Middle East war, and pursued necessary measures including easing eligibility requirements for employment retention subsidies and designating preemptive employment crisis response zones."