Employment by professional status in Korea

Korea: Employment by professional status was 28,769 Persons in 2025. ▲ Rising

Latest (2025)
28,769 Persons
Change on year
up 0.7%
Rank
1st
of 3 groups
All-time high
28,769 Persons
in 2025
All-time low
14,429 Persons
in 1984
Years of data
43
1983–2025

Employment by professional status in Korea, 1983–2025

010.0k20.0k30.0k1983200420251983: 14.5k Persons1984: 14.4k Persons1985: 15.0k Persons1986: 15.5k Persons1987: 16.4k Persons1988: 16.9k Persons1989: 17.6k Persons1990: 18.1k Persons1991: 18.6k Persons1992: 19.0k Persons1993: 19.2k Persons1994: 19.8k Persons1995: 20.4k Persons1996: 20.9k Persons1997: 21.2k Persons1998: 19.9k Persons1999: 20.3k Persons2000: 21.2k Persons2001: 21.6k Persons2002: 22.2k Persons2003: 22.2k Persons2004: 22.7k Persons2005: 22.8k Persons2006: 23.2k Persons2007: 23.6k Persons2008: 23.8k Persons2009: 23.7k Persons2010: 24.0k Persons2011: 24.5k Persons2012: 25.0k Persons2013: 25.3k Persons2014: 25.9k Persons2015: 26.2k Persons2016: 26.4k Persons2017: 26.7k Persons2018: 26.8k Persons2019: 27.1k Persons2020: 26.9k Persons2021: 27.3k Persons2022: 28.1k Persons2023: 28.4k Persons2024: 28.6k Persons2025: 28.8k Persons

Source: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Measured in Persons.

Analysis

The most recent figure for employment by professional status in Korea is 28,769 Persons, measured in 2025. That is the highest value across all 43 years on record.

The figure is up 0.7% on the previous year and up 9.9% over ten years.

Over the whole period, employment by professional status in Korea peaked at 28,769 Persons in 2025 and was at its lowest, 14,429 Persons, in 1984.

The long-run direction has been consistently rising across the 43 years of available data.

Averages by decade

DecadeAverage LowestHighest Years
1980s 15,742 Persons 14,429 Persons 17,561 Persons 7
1990s 19,754 Persons 18,085 Persons 21,214 Persons 10
2000s 22,696 Persons 21,173 Persons 23,775 Persons 10
2010s 25,797 Persons 24,033 Persons 27,123 Persons 10
2020s 28,004 Persons 26,904 Persons 28,769 Persons 6

Countries ranked near Korea

  1. 1 United States 163,493 Persons compare
  2. 2 Brazil 103,224 Persons compare
  3. 3 Russian Federation 70,601 Persons compare
  4. 4 Japan 68,280 Persons compare

See the full ranking of 43 places →

More work & labour data for Korea

All data for Korea →

Frequently asked questions

What is employment by professional status in Korea?
Employment by professional status in Korea was 28,769 Persons in 2025, according to Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
What is the highest employment by professional status recorded in Korea?
The highest recorded value was 28,769 Persons in 2025.
What is the lowest employment by professional status recorded in Korea?
The lowest recorded value was 14,429 Persons in 1984.
How does Korea rank for employment by professional status?
Korea ranks 1st out of 3 groups with data for 2025.
Is employment by professional status rising or falling in Korea?
Over the last ten years it is up 9.9%. The long-run trend across the full record is rising.
Where does this Korea data come from?
The figures come from Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, published as part of Employment by professional status (ICSE-93). Statizoid updates them automatically from the source API.

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Employment by professional status in Korea. Statizoid, drawing on Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Retrieved 21 August 2026, from https://labour.statizoid.com/stat/employment-by-professional-status-icse-93/korea/

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About this data

Indicator
Employment by professional status (ICSE-93)
Unit
Persons
Source
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
Licence
OECD Terms and Conditions (attribution required)
Coverage
43 places, 2,053 data points, 1955–2025
Last refreshed

The dataflow "Employment by profesional status (ICSE-93)" is a subset of the “Employment by activites and status (ALFS)” dataset which presents annual labour force statistics for OECD member countries, Brazil and 4 geographical areas (Major Seven, Euro zone, European Union and OECD-Total). This dataflow contains employment statistics for all economic activities broken down by professional status as defined by the ICSE-1993 including employees, employers and own-account workers, and unpaid family workers. Economic activities are defined according to the Major divisions of the International standard International Classification (ISIC) Rev. 4 with the exception of the United-States wich compiled since 2003, employment data by sector following the North American Industrial Classification System (NAICS); NAICS sector are then proxied to ISIC Rev. 4 and are therefore not strictly comparable with other countries’ data. The professional status is defined in the International Classification by status in Employment (ICSE-1993). To be considered as an unpaid family worker, the hour-threshold varies from one hour to 18 hours a week. Data are presented in thousands of persons, or as indices with base year 2015=100. Annual data in this dataset are typically calculated as averages of infra-annual estimates. This can lead to differences with annual data published by National Statistics Institutes.