1 in 4 Young People Can't Afford to Save

A quarter of young people have zero savings, a poll suggests. According to the poll of 2,500 young men and women aged between 15-34 years conducted by the Korea Labor Institute last month, some 574, or 23 percent, of them are saving no money each month.

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This is also true for the 1,391 respondents in their 20s. Some 391, or 23 percent, said they have no savings, probably because it takes a long time for them to find jobs and many of them end up landing only jobs that earn less than W2 million a month (US$1=W1,210).

Some 1,498 said trying to find jobs took them 11.7 months on average to land their first entry-level position. Of the respondents, 1,000 had jobs, but thirty-five percent, or three out of 10, were earning less than W2 million per month.

"Overall quality of their life seems to be deteriorating because many young people have no steady jobs and thus have an unstable income", the institute speculated.