Gwangju wins top prize at national local government jobs awards

Gwangju Metropolitan City won the presidential award at this year's national local government employment policy evaluation, recognized for creating 81,000 jobs centered on future strategic industries including AI, next-generation vehicles and energy. South Gyeongsang Province took a prime minister's award after posting a record-high employment rate of 69.9%, while Cheonan in South Chungcheong Province earned the same honor for leveraging a big data platform to achieve an all-time high of 490,000 employed residents.

The Ministry of Employment and Labor held the "2026 National Local Government Jobs Awards" ceremony Wednesday at the Korea Press Center in Seoul, honoring 73 local governments. The government has operated a regional jobs disclosure system since 2012, under which local governments announce job-creation targets and the policies to achieve them; top performers are selected each year.

This year's grand presidential prize went to Gwangju Metropolitan City. South Gyeongsang Province won the prime minister's award in the metropolitan government category, and Cheonan took the same prize in the basic local government category.

Gwangju pursued five core priorities — industrial transition, job creation, tailored support, quality improvement and crisis response — to develop future strategic industries in AI, next-generation vehicles and energy, generating 81,000 jobs in the process.

The city drew particular praise for immediately activating a public-private joint task force when a fire broke out at Kumho Tire's Gwangju factory, establishing an employment safety net for affected workers. Policies seen as models for other regions and the central government — including a "10 a.m. start" option for parents of elementary school children and a breakfast support program for industrial complex workers — also received high marks.

Gwangju also expanded its AI-driven future jobs infrastructure. Building on its AI cluster and national AI data center, the city signed MOUs with 352 companies; 160 of those firms have since opened offices in Gwangju, employing 640 people. The city also secured an exemption from a preliminary feasibility review for its 600 billion won ($425 million) "AX Demonstration Valley" development project.

South Gyeongsang Province, which won the metropolitan government category award, was recognized for tailored employment policies linking the region's core industries with workforce development. The employment rate for residents aged 15 to 64 reached 69.9%, the highest since records began — up 2.4 percentage points from the 2022–2024 average of 67.5%.

The province supported 16,862 jobs across its key industries — shipbuilding, aviation, auto parts and steel — and expanded joint labor welfare funds between large companies and their suppliers. It also promoted industry-academia partnerships in which universities design company-tailored curricula and firms offer hiring preferences to graduates. Those efforts pushed the youth employment rate from 34.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2024 to 40.6 percent in the fourth quarter of last year, and the population of residents in their 30s swung to a net inflow of 584 people.

Cheonan, the winner in the basic local government category, drew attention for policies built around a big data jobs platform it was the first city in the country to establish. The platform integrates and publicly discloses employment indicators and departmental job programs, and feeds citizen feedback, employment data and program outcomes back into policy. Through the system, the city identified three new job programs supporting 552 people.

In semiconductor back-end processing — a pillar of the local economy — the city supported 451 people through a two-track talent development approach combining advanced skills training for incumbent workers with technical education for university students. Senior employment programs also shifted away from simple environmental maintenance toward self-sustaining, revenue-generating models such as bakery production. The number of employed seniors in Cheonan reached a record 35,600, up 5,500 from the previous year, and total employment hit an all-time high of 490,000.

Employment and Labor Minister Kim Young-hoon identified the lack of quality jobs as one of the main reasons local talent leaves for the greater Seoul area. "To overcome the crisis of regional depopulation and build self-sustaining local labor markets, local governments must go beyond simply increasing the number of jobs and focus on raising their quality," Kim said. "The central government will provide strong backing under the goal of balanced growth that benefits everyone, so that regions can grow by drawing on their own strengths."