Recent Changes in Women's Occupations and Wages in Korea

This paper will analyze the recent changes in women’s occupation and wages in Korea, focusing on the trend of the gender wage gap between 2008 and 2015 and its determinants. Especially, the changes in the occupational profiles of young female college graduates will be highlighted. They will crucially affect the future trend of the gender wage gap. Young female college graduates are now rapidly advancing to the high-skill jobs which were previously dominated by men. The U.S. has already witnessed the advance of female workers to the high-skill male-dominant jobs with the increase of skill premium. Skill premium has increased from the globalization and high-skill biased technical change since the 1970s (Black and Juhn, 2000). Of course, it would not have been possible without the supply factor, that is, the improvement in the education level of women. The increase of the number of female entering in the high-skill male-dominant job is a powerful factor to decrease the gender wage gap in the future. The wages of male-dominant jobs are much higher than those of female-dominant jobs. This paper analyzed the changes of women’s occupations and wages between 2008 and 2015. This period is chosen for the data of the Local Area Labor Force Survey to use the 3-digit classification of occupations. The data is available after 2008. This paper targeted certain age groups: the working age group (ages 25 to 54) and the youth cohort (ages 25 to 34) in order to focus on occupations. In Korea, workers tend to quit their main jobs job after turning 54. This paper also analyzed the occupational changes of young female workers, focusing on the 15 occupations (3-digit classification) which employed the most young women aged 25 to 34 between 2008 and 2015.