The Determinants of S&E Workforce Shortage in Korean Manufacturing Sectors

산업기술인력 부족의 결정요인 분석

It has been pointed out that the shortage of the Korean science and engineering workforce is a key issue in enterprises' competitiveness. The Korean government has conducted various surveys and research projects to determine the current situation and its causes. Nevertheless, the surveys report different results, and, to date, very few in-depth studies have been conducted on the factors that lead to such a shortage. This study aimed at investigating the factors that cause the shortage of the science and engineering workforce by looking at a recent survey on the actual employment conditions in manufacturing and major service industries. The study also estimated the determinant factors, based on the results of a survey conducted on 5,967 enterprises. Particularly, the probability of the workforce shortages are defined as a logistic probability function, which includes a diverse number of explanations that represent the characteristics of an enterprise and its internal demand conditions on workforce. The findings showed that key determinants include not only the factors that have been recognized by previous studies, but also research propensity and competitiveness aw well as the enterprises' internal demand conditions on human resources. In other words, an enterprise is more exposed to the problem of workforce shortage when it performs its R&D more proactively and its innovative activities are more organized. It has been further analyzed that the R&D and internal demand variables are more eminent to the shortage problem on skilled workers, which proves the shortage of workforce is not only caused by the quantitative aspect but also hold qualitative aspect characterized by skill obsolescence and mismatch in the labor market.