Korea will build a "Korean-style employment crisis warning system" to preemptively grasp the impact that artificial intelligence transformation (AX) will have on the job market. The government will create a "Korean-style canary dashboard" that detects in real time the flow of job replacement, restructuring, and creation caused by AI, and will support AI job training for more than 1 million people from this year through 2030.
The government held its first national policy coordination meeting on the 9th following Prime Minister Han Sung-sook's inauguration and announced the joint inter-ministerial "Basic Plan for Industrial Transition Employment Stability." This plan is the first statutory basic plan established under the "Act on Employment Stability Support for Industrial Transition." The government set preemptive response, opportunity creation, and benefit sharing as its three main directions and will pursue seven action tasks agreed upon by labor, management, and the government.
The government views the current job market as facing a "triple crisis" of AI proliferation, climate crisis, and population decline. The core measure is building a system to constantly monitor changes in the job market. The government decided to operate the Korean-style canary dashboard, referencing analysis tools from the Stanford Digital Economy Lab in the United States. The canary is a symbol of danger warnings that once detected toxic gases first in coal mines, serving the role of identifying AI-driven job shocks early.
To this end, the government will develop a "Korea-Style AI Occupational Exposure Index (K-AIOE)" suited to Korea's occupational realities through research services. Until now, domestic analysis of AI's employment impact has been conducted by applying Korean occupational information to overseas indices, which drew criticism for difficulty in sufficiently reflecting the characteristics of the Korean labor market. The government will create an index that comprehensively reflects the characteristics of jobs, industries, and workers, and will also prepare an "Industrial Transition Jobs Map" showing job changes by region, industry, and occupation.
"We will build the Korean-style canary dashboard by the second half of 2027 at the earliest, or early 2028 at the latest, providing it so that any citizen can check changes in the labor market," a Ministry of Employment and Labor official said. The government will also constantly identify the timing and scale of employment shocks in industries expected to undergo structural transition, such as steel and petrochemicals, and will conduct advance employment impact assessments by selecting one industry each year.
Job training support will also be expanded to help workers adapt to the changed job market. The government will support basic job training through the National Tomorrow Learning Card and increase practice-oriented education and training so that unemployed and unskilled youth can grow into AI engineers and similar roles. To ease the concentration of AI training opportunities in the greater Seoul area, the government will expand infrastructure such as training expansion centers, centered on non-metropolitan regions. The obligation to provide reemployment support services will be gradually expanded from the current workplaces with 1,000 or more employees to workplaces with 300 or more employees by 2029.
Separate protective measures will be prepared for industries and regions with large employment shocks. Transition shocks in high-carbon industries such as coal power generation, automobiles, petrochemicals, steel, and cement are likely to be concentrated in specific regions such as South Chungcheong, Ulsan, Yeosu, and Pohang. When signs of crisis are detected, the government will preemptively designate such regions as "Just Transition Special Districts" and provide a package of employment stability, new industry cultivation, and administrative and financial support. Social enterprise jobs will also be expanded to 90,000 by 2030.
As a mid- to long-term task, discussions on wage compensation will be pursued. This is a plan to compensate for temporary income gaps or wage declines for workers who inevitably face job changes, career transitions, and relocation during the transition process. However, the Ministry of Labor explained that it is difficult to produce a solution in a short period, as funding and institutional design are needed.
In addition, the government will expand the scope of the performance-sharing system and support the conclusion of "supply chain employment stability agreements" in which prime contractors and subcontractors jointly pledge employment maintenance and transition training. An "Industrial Transition Employment Stability Committee" involving labor, management, and the government will also be newly established. "Our workplaces are facing fundamental change," Labor Minister Kim Young-hoon said. "We will examine changes on the ground and develop the plan together with labor and management."
