Youth upward mobility rate falls to 22.4%

Escape rate from bottom income quintile drops to 29.3%

86.5% of top earners stay in top bracket

The share of Koreans who moved to a higher income bracket in 2024 fell below 17 percent, the lowest level since related statistics were first compiled in 2017.

The upward mobility rate declined among youth and middle-aged groups, while it edged up among the elderly. The share of people in the bottom 20 percent of earners who moved to a higher bracket the following year also fell below 30 percent, pointing to growing difficulty in crossing income class boundaries.

Job listings posted at the Seoul Western Employment and Welfare Plus Center in Mapo-gu, Seoul. [Yonhap]
Job listings posted at the Seoul Western Employment and Welfare Plus Center in Mapo-gu, Seoul. [Yonhap]

Overall income mobility stood at 33.0 percent in 2024, down 1.2 percentage points from the previous year, according to the Ministry of Statistics' "2024 Income Mobility Statistics" released Thursday.

Income mobility measures the share of income earners whose income bracket changed compared with the prior year, tracked over two consecutive years. In 2024, only about one in three Koreans with income moved to a different bracket from the year before.

The rate has fallen for four consecutive years since reaching 35.0 percent in 2021. The share of people who moved to a higher bracket was 16.9 percent of the total, down 0.5 percentage points from the previous year, while those who moved to a lower bracket fell 0.7 percentage points to 16.1 percent. Both the upward and downward mobility rates were the lowest since the statistics were first compiled in 2017.

Population aging and a slowdown in earned income growth have been cited as factors behind the declining mobility. Analysts also point to wages and other earned income growing more slowly than the overall economic growth rate.

"The rate of increase in employee compensation in 2024 was lower than the overall growth rate, while the rate of increase in corporate surplus was higher," said Choi Ba-ul, director of the policy statistics research division at the National Data Research Institute. "Corporations took a somewhat larger share of the fruits of growth," Choi added.

By age group, the slowdown in upward mobility among youth was particularly notable. The upward mobility rate for those aged 15 to 39 fell 0.6 percentage points to 22.4 percent, from 23.0 percent the previous year. The rate for the middle-aged group of 40 to 64 also slipped from 14.7 percent to 14.5 percent over the same period.

Among the elderly, however, the rate edged up 0.1 percentage points from 9.9 percent to 10.0 percent. By gender, women posted a higher upward mobility rate of 17.9 percent, compared with 16.0 percent for men.

The prolonged slump in youth employment is seen as a key factor behind the decline in upward mobility among younger Koreans. For the elderly, growth in earned income through senior employment programs is believed to have contributed to their rise in income brackets.

Choi said the relatively slow recovery of youth from the COVID-19 shock, combined with the possible influence of tools such as ChatGPT that emerged around 2022, may also have played a role.

The rate of escaping the bottom income quintile also fell. Of those in the first quintile in 2023, 29.3 percent moved to the second through fifth quintiles in 2024, down 0.6 percentage points from 29.9 percent the year before. This means more than seven in 10 people in the lowest income bracket remained there the following year.

The escape rate from the bottom quintile also fell across age groups. Among youth, the rate dropped 0.7 percentage points from 38.4 percent in 2023 to 37.7 percent in 2024, while the middle-aged group saw a 0.5 percentage point decline from 31.9 percent to 31.4 percent.

At the top end of the income scale, the share of people staying in their bracket actually rose. Of those in the top 20 percent — the fifth quintile — in 2023, 86.5 percent remained in the same bracket the following year, up 0.6 percentage points from the prior year.

Long-term entrapment in the lowest income bracket was also confirmed. Among those in the first quintile in 2017, when the statistics were first compiled, 24.9 percent had not left that bracket for eight consecutive years through 2024.

However, income in this statistical series refers to the sum of an individual's earned income and business income. The ministry added that a low individual income bracket does not necessarily indicate poverty, as the household as a whole may have higher income or receive property or transfer income.


y2k@heraldcorp.com