Seoul's policies for middle-aged residents should move beyond simple reemployment support toward tailored programs that account for individual careers and skills as well as housing and caregiving circumstances, participants at a policy forum said. They also called for linking existing career experience to jobs in emerging industries and for reorganizing the delivery of these services around neighborhoods so that training and jobs are available close to home.
The Seoul Metropolitan Government and the Seoul50Plus Foundation held the "Seoul Midlife Policy Forum 2026" at the Korea Press Center on the 15th under the theme "Diverse Middle-Aged Lives, Diverse Work — Seoul's Answers." About 150 people attended, including officials from agencies handling midlife policy, experts and corporate representatives.
At the forum, the Seoul50Plus Foundation released for the first time its Seoul Midlife Quality of Life Index, which assesses household finances, employment, housing, health, caregiving, retirement preparation and digital transition. The survey covered 2,058 Seoul residents aged 40 to 64, and Kye Bong-oh, a professor of sociology at Kookmin University, presented the first results and their policy implications.
The survey found that life satisfaction among middle-aged residents varied more by housing, income and family structure than by employment status. There was almost no difference in satisfaction between those with and without jobs, while households of three or more people, married respondents and those living in homes they own reported satisfaction above the overall average. Single-person households, unmarried respondents and those renting on a monthly basis without a deposit scored below average. Average monthly household income was 6.617 million won, but only 20.9% said they were satisfied with their income, pointing to a gap between income levels and how it feels in practice.
Caregiving burdens on those caught between parents and children also stood out. Some 88.1% of respondents were caring for a parent or a child, and nearly half were caring for both at the same time. While 63.9% said midlife policies should be expanded, only 22.6% said they actually felt the benefit. Demand was also high for socially oriented jobs, exercise and physical activity, reemployment support, and AI and digital education.
On employment, speakers argued that the bigger problem is not a shortage of jobs but the mismatch between the careers middle-aged workers hold and what companies need. Choi Young-seob, a professor at the KOREATECH Graduate School of HRD, identified jobs suited to middle-aged workers across seven fields, including safety and firefighting, IT and telecommunications, energy and equipment, and AI and data. Training courses of 300 to 320 hours were proposed for roles such as AI transition support specialist, telecommunications infrastructure maintenance technician, video information manager, small business management support specialist, pet food specialist and solar power safety manager.
Adding new technical skills to long-accumulated experience was also put forward as an option. Yoon Ye-ji, chief executive of Dcube, said that in the shift to artificial intelligence, what matters is not only the technology itself but people who understand the context of existing work and can carry it into new systems. Yoon proposed education and matching systems that would channel the domain experience of middle-aged workers into a new role as AI transition support specialists.
The distance to jobs and training was another main topic. Song Min-hye, a senior manager at the Seoul50Plus Foundation, said 94.3% of middle-aged Seoul residents want to work within the district where they live, and called for expanding "intermediate roles" that sit between skilled technical work and basic manual work and can be entered by adding specific skills to an existing career. Facility safety inspectors and school facility safety managers were cited as examples.
Kang So-rang, head of the foundation's policy research team, analyzed usage data from 426 administrative neighborhoods and five 50Plus campuses and found that every additional kilometer of distance from a campus reduced users by about 6.5%, with usage staying low beyond 4 kilometers. More than 94% of users at a new campus were projected to be first-time users rather than people shifting from existing facilities. On that basis, participants said facilities should be expanded so that support services such as vocational training and digital skills programs are available close to where people live.
The closing discussion also converged on the view that education, training and job pathways should be designed differently depending on individual experience and the entry barriers of each occupation, based on career assessments, and made available within residents' own neighborhoods. The city plans to expand its Midlife Job Training Academy, which began operating at five sites this year, to all 25 districts, offering support from career assessment through practical training to job matching.
Oh Se-hoon, the mayor of Seoul, said middle-aged residents are grouped under a single label but have lived different lives and need different things going forward. "We will look closely at who needs what kind of help most urgently and respond with policies that fit the diverse lives of middle-aged residents," Oh said.
