A wellbeing-based approach to analysing ‘bad jobs’ in South Korea

CDI News Desk

31 December 2025

A wellbeing-based approach to analysing ‘bad jobs’ in South Korea

This paper in The Economic and Labour Relations Review explores job quality in South Korea, using a wellbeing-based approach to define ‘bad jobs’. The researchers analysed the Korean Working Conditions Survey (2014-2023) data to identify the connection between job quality and worker wellbeing.

While the rate of bad jobs has declined in the period, there was a proliferation of non-standard and non-regular jobs after the 2008 financial crash, disproportionately affecting women, the young and the old.

The study uses seven dimensions of defining job quality; earnings, prospects, skills and discretion, work intensity, social environment, physical environment and working time quality.

The analysis demonstrates discontinuity in the marginal effects of job quality on wellbeing for workers in the bottom ten percent, where improvements yield greater wellbeing gains for those workers moving above this level.

Read the full report on Bad Jobs in South Korea.

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