Social service jobs have since the mid-2000s held the spotlight as a policy tool with which to navigate through the challenge of jobless growth. The demand for social services grew even as, as has been shown in recent years, growth slowed and both unemployment and employment insecurity remained high. The Korea Employment Information Service in its Mid-and-Long-Term Manpower Supply Outlook 2020~2030 (2021) has presented social services as a promising industry with ample potential to lead job creation in times such as now of rapid population aging. Korea’s social service sector is likely to grow further as the current government has placed on its national agenda a large number of policy items concerning social service jobs in the care and health industry. Since achieving such government goals—upgrading welfare and care services through reform of the social service sector, reinforcing the systems of care and employment as befitting the age of centenarians, fostering conditions for safe and good-quality child-rearing, making Korea into a society without discrimination by providing people with disabilities with well-coordinated customized services, to mention just a few—requires a still further ramp-up of the workforce who would provide users with in-person services, the attention fastened on social service jobs is likely to remain strong in the years to come. There is a pronounced need, however, for efforts to create not just jobs, but quality jobs, by way of improving on the current social jobs policy, which, implemented with the aim of “industrializing social services” and “job creation”, has, as some have claimed, been churning out low-quality jobs. This study broadly examines how social service jobs have changed in their characteristics in terms in particular of quantity and quality and draws out some implications for the improvement of the social services policy.
