Politicians should respond to younger voters' anger over rising unemployment

Politicians should respond to younger voters' anger over rising unemployment. April. 16, 2016 07:14. .

Statistics Korea, the state statistical agency, reported Friday that the country's youth unemployment reached 11.8 percent in March, the highest March figure. The total unemployment rate in March rose by 0.3 percentage point from a year earlier. However, the joblessness among those at ages 15 to 29 jumped by 1.1 percentage point during the same period. The sight of younger people walking through the long tunnel of unemployment alone with drooping shoulders haunts us.

According to the results of the exit polls following Wednesday's parliamentary elections, the turnout of voters in their 20s jumped by 13 percentage points from the previous elections four years ago, while that of those in their 30s rose by 6 percentage points. Turnouts by those in their 40s to 60s were almost unchanged from 2012. The results suggest that younger voters made a judgment against the ruling party, which has been preoccupied with ugly power struggles, turning a blind eye to the worsening employment situation.

When Rep. Choi Kyung-hwan, a key member of a ruling party faction loyal to President Park Geun-hye, was serving as finance minister last year, he said younger Koreans were reacting positively to the government's labor reform drive. However, the election results show that he made a misjudgment. The government provided only a superficial explanation, saying that the unemployment rate is usually higher in March than in other months because it is a season when many people apply for jobs at local governments or large corporations. Nevertheless, opposition parties would end up misinterpreting the voter sentiment if they consider the election results as younger generations' support of populist policies offering cash benefits to jobless people. Opposition parties simply gained from what the ruling party lost.

Korea is not the only country where younger generations have emerged as the eye of the storm. In the United States, Hillary Clinton was expected to easily clinch the Democratic Party nomination for the upcoming presidential election. However, she is having a hard time because many younger voters support Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. According to the U.S. Labor Department, the youth unemployment (among people at ages 16-34) rate stood at 11.2 percent as of December 2014. Jobs are hard to get. Even those with jobs find their wage income not high enough. The younger generations' anger, which seemed to have been calmed since the Occupy Wall Street movement, is underlying the Sanders storm.

Youth employment is not a matter of ideology but one of livelihood, and our future depends on it.

The political circles should take as a grave warning the fact that the younger generations, who tended to support opposition parties but showed low turnouts, went to the polls in droves.