농축산업 외국인력 활용실태와 정책과제

Abstract

The shrinking and aging of the population in rural areas have caused the increasing demand for wage workers in the agricultural sector of the Republic of Korea (hereafter, Korea) over the past decades. Due to difficulties in recruiting local Korean workers, growers began hiring foreigners since the early 2000s. In 2004, the government introduced the Employment Permit System (EPS), a program to allow employers who have failed to hire locals, to employ foreigners. The government continues to increase the quota for migrant agricultural workers since then, except 2009. This paper examines whether the EPS meets the needs of farmers by analyzing the responses of 297 farmers currently employing migrant workers. The responses are obtained from the 2013 Survey on the Living Conditions of Foreign Workers. The results show that farmers currently employing migrant workers heavily rely on this foreign workforce. Three out of every four employees are migrant workers, and 43.9 percent of employers do not have locals in their workforce. Considering that most respondents opine that locals are unlikely to work in the agricultural sector, the labor shortage will be maintained and the dependence of farmers on migrant workers is only expected to increase in the future. We argue that the current labor shortages in the agricultural sector can not be resolved simply through the increased quota for migrant agricultural workers. Measures should be taken to address the gap between the horticultural and stockbreeding sectors in terms of wage rates and labor shortages and seasonality which prevails in the horticultural sector. Compared to the stockbreeding sector, the horticultural sector shows lower pay rates and slower wage increase; therefore, there is a possibility that migrant workers in the horticultural sector seek to find a job in the stockbreeding sector. Given that growers in horticulture experience far greater labor shortage than livestock farmers, it should be considered that incentives in terms of residency are provided to migrant workers employed in the horticultural sector. On the other hand, considering the seasonal difference in labor needs that often lead to disputes between farmers and migrant workers, deliberate thoughts should be given to policy options to provide subsidies to cover migrant workers’ wages or give them unpaid leave during the off-season.