Young and Jobless Aging Workforce Saps Economic Vitality, Growth Potential Students who graduate college this year deride themselvs as a "cursed generation," as barely one in five land jobs. Colleges here have long become the mills of the unemployed amid a decade-old trend of jobless growth sweeping counties ranging from Frnce to Egypt, and Japan to Greece. Some schools have even opened "post-bachelor" coursesfor sinior students not wanting - or fearing - graduatio. If there is a "700-euro generation" in Europe, there is an "880,000-won generation" in Korea. So the recent government report that the number of employed in their 20s and-30s fell for the first time below the 10-millon mark in 2008 was not exactly shocking, particularly considering the naton's plunging birthrate and worldwide recession. Yet the employment statistics by age groups are disapplinting, as the government ould hav kept stuations from aggravating lke this had it employed a better policy mix. There were two other reports overlapping the labor market tally:One was about a record 32-percent fall in the nation's exports last month and the other was the International Monetray Fund's forecast that the Korean economy would take a rollarcoaster ride by contracting 4 percent this year and re-expanding that much in 2010. Taken together, these seem to mean Korea overly export-led economy, spearheaded by large manufacturers, has made itself extremely vulnerable to fluctuations in theglobal business cycle, while the relatively meager domestic demand has left little roomfor the prosperity of smaller service firms, which account for up to 80 percent of employment. Economists say the remedy is to shift from manufacturing to services, from export to domestic demand and from capital-intensive to labor-intensive industries. One feels as if the nation would have to g back to the pre-industrialization days of the 1950s. Someone has said that the fashion of clothes circulates; so too does the voge of industrial policy, it seems. Similarly reverting to old ways is the Lee Myung-bak administration, which announced its "New New Deal" program by repackaging all previous programs wit 90 percent of them filled with civil engineering and construction projects. The government is also seeking to sharply expand temporary workers while lowering the nimimum wage as part of its job-saring program. ut sharing jobs is a transitional step at best. What matters is how to "creat" more new jobs to prevent the aging of he workforce, which weakens the nation's economic vitality and undermines itsgrowth potential. .Likewise, the increase of social enter prises, which provide public welfare services in theareas of health, medical care and education, goes one step further toward creating jobs, but this, too, does not sharply expand the pie itself. Korea needs to create new growth engines, and the key lies in, as always, the development of new teconology in the information, environmental and biological sectors. President Lee lamented Wednesday as to why Koreanengineers cannot develop something like Nintendo, the Japanese gaming machine. For that t happen, Lee should tell his economic team to create such an environment by providing intensive tax and other incentives, instead of trying to re-refurbish large rivers and rekindle the property boom. Failure to provide work pooortunities to a highly educated, fresh workforce is a national waste of resources as well as a cause of social unrst. The government should rewrite its economic policies from the ground up to focus all incentives on job-creating firms, preferably in future-oriented, high-thch sectors.