The Statistics Korea released the results of the “2024 Survey on Immigrant Residency Status and Employment.” Key findings include:
– 37.1% of foreign workers earned over 3 million KRW, which is an increase of 1.3% compared to the previous year.
– The number of non-economically active foreigners increased by 35,000 from the previous year, reaching 490,000.
– Foreign workers expressed high satisfaction with their income, occupation, housing, and family relationships while living in Korea, showing an overall satisfaction rate of 84.3%.
Additionally, the survey found:
– 80% of foreign employees earned a monthly wage of over 2 million KRW, and those earning more than 3 million KRW have increased to 37.1%.
– 88.3% of foreign workers earned over 2 million KRW monthly.
– Foreigners earning between 1 million and 2 million KRW decreased by 6.5% from the previous year.
– The unemployment rate for those unemployed for less than three months slightly decreased, while those unemployed for three months or more slightly increased.
Foreign workers’ satisfaction with life in Korea rose by 3.9 percentage points compared to the previous year, with income satisfaction increasing by 4.9 percentage points. Satisfaction regarding job and housing conditions also saw increases of 4.0 and 4.8 percentage points, respectively.
Length of stay showed that:
– 31.9% had been in Korea for more than 10 years.
– 90.4% wish to continue staying after their current period ends, with extension methods being visa extension (61.6%), acquiring permanent residency (16.9%), or changing visa type (11%).
Overall, the survey indicates rising satisfaction among foreign residents and highlights the main challenge as language barriers, although most report no significant difficulties living in Korea.