What is the Gwangju job project?

It is a regional innovation movement in which regional communities attempt to change labor-management relationships and production methods, improve the quality of labor, actively invite new investments, and improve the structured distortion in the labor market through a great social compromise based on solidarity and innovation

Background of Managing the Gwangju Job Project

  • Propelled as a core policy of the 6th popularly elected Gwangju administration to overcome lack of quality jobs, job insecurity, long working hours, unreasonable relationships between prime and subcontractors, etc., caused by polarization and distortion in the labor market, and provide alternatives
    1. In the 1980s, wages at small and medium-sized businesses were about 90% of wages paid by large corporations; currently, they are about 60% and 50% of wages paid by large corporations in the manufacturing industry and the automobile industry, respectively.
  • Economic conditions are inadequate and the industrial foundation is weak in the Gwangju region, compared to the Seoul metropolitan area; the youth unemployment rate and the number of youths leaving the region for quality jobs are on the rise.
    1. Increase in the youth unemployment rate: 6.7% in 2011 → 8.6% in 2018 (up by 1.9%p)
    2. Annual income level of employed youths in Gwangju (based on 2014 data): More than 60% of them receive 20 million KRW or less a year.
  • Economic difficulties in the region are aggravated by a slowdown in the growth rate, a small proportion (27%) of manufacturing businesses compared to other cities and the lowest GRDP per capita in Korea.
    1. Economic Growth Rate: 3.2%(2014) → 1.7% (2015) → 1.0% (2016)
    2. GRDP per capita (2016): 22 million KRW in Gwangju / An average of 32 million KRW in Seoul and other metropolitan cities
  • Economic difficulties in the region are aggravated due to a decrease in the domestic production of automobiles, resulting from increased overseas production of automobiles, when the automobile industry is a core industry of the Gwangju region.
    1. Domestic car production: 4.56 million units in 2012 → 4.23 million units in 2016
    2. Overseas car production: 3.64 million units in 2012 → 4.65 million units in 2016

The Gwangju job project, included in the new government’s 100 projects, emerges as an agenda of this area.

  • Jul. 2017
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    Labor and Management Win-Win Job Model
    Creating jobs tailored to the region and the industry through social communication
  • Jan. 2018
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    New Year’s Address by the president
    The Gwangju job project must be accomplished. /
    The Gwangju job project will be an indication of a great social compromise.
  • Jan. 2019
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    Investment Agreement Ceremony between Gwangju City and Hyundai Motors Co., Ltd.
    The Gwangju job project will become an important turning point in the move toward a nation of innovative and inclusive employment.