This review discusses the progress that Korea has made in past years in achieving a more inclusive labour market by increasing the capacity and availability of active labour market policies (ALMPs), and blending different services and service channels into one‑stop shops. Further strengthening evidence‑based and data-driven services would help ensure that no‑one is left behind through personalised, comprehensive and effective support to jobseekers.

In line with Korea’s commitment to fostering an inclusive and well-performing labour market, resources allocated to ALMPs have increased from low levels over recent years (reaching 0.6% of GDP in 2021). While many types of ALMPs exist, the ALMP offer largely focuses on direct job creation programmes (0.18% of GDP or 30% of all ALMP spending), with less resources available for other types of ALMPs, such as training for youth and older jobseekers. Korea targets most of its ALMPs to groups vulnerable to labour market disadvantage, with a view to ensure support is provided to those who need it most.

Korea has created a large number of Employment Welfare Plus Centres, where employment counsellors and social workers from different organisations work together, aiming to create synergies and ensure comprehensive service provision.

Driven by the comprehensive strategic approach to digitalisation by the Ministry of Employment and Labor and the Korea Employment Information Service (in charge of implementing digital employment services), digital channels have become fully integrated in ALMP delivery to jobseekers and employers in Korea. Remarkable progress has been made in adopting innovative tools using state‑of-the‑art technologies, and a continuous improvement process is envisioned to achieve an even more integrated, automated, personalised and data-driven ecosystem of digital employment services providing better user experience and value‑added to Public Employment Service (PES) clients.

The review’s key policy recommendations include:

• Diversify the ALMP portfolio by channelling some of the funds that are currently used for direct job creation programmes to other types of ALMPs, notably training, especially for youth and older jobseekers.

• Enhance co‑operation within Employment Welfare Plus Centres, for example through staff training focusing on co‑operation, systematic co‑operation processes and dedicated teams consisting of staff from different institutions.

• Continue to extend co‑operation with employers. Assist employers with vacancy descriptions (including with digital tools) and filling bottleneck vacancies, and provide post-placement support to hire vulnerable jobseekers sustainably. Augment job mediation by web scraping and predicting hiring needs.

• Establish key principles and frameworks for the digital transition in the long-term digitalisation strategy for the PES and align the agile short to medium-term action plans to implement digital transition with the strategy.

• Develop a framework to manage service channels to jobseekers optimally and consistently across Korea, considering the type and objective of the specific services, as well as the target groups.

• Increase the accessibility of digital tools and services by identifying jobseekers with low digital skills early and ensuring that jobseekers with lower digital skills or other constraints to using digital channels are not left behind.

• Continue developing the one‑stop shop of digital employment services. Strengthen profiling jobseeker competencies and interests for better career management, facilitate independent and instructed online training, and enhance user experience and interactivity of the PES platform by harnessing generalised AI.

• Monitor and evaluate ALMPs and digital solutions comprehensively and systematically to gain a good understanding of the impact of ALMPs and digital tools and ensure good use of public funds. Continue efforts to link data from administrative registers to use for digital services, as well as to enrich and automate monitoring and evaluation activities.