Skills and Wages of Public Employees: Investigating Korean Bureaucracy through PIAAC

Abstract

Korea’s public employees have made significant contributions to the country’s rapid economic growth and social development. In recent years, however, there has been growing concern that the competitiveness of Korea’s public employees is lagging behind Korea’s private sector employees as well as the public employees of other countries. This paper uses the OECD PIAAC (Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies) data to empirically analyze Korean public employees’ skill level, skill-use, and learning, with emphasis on comparison with public employees of OECD countries and the domestic private sector. Also, we analyze the skill-wage gap and the returns to skills of public employees to observe whether the wage system of public employees provides sufficient incentives for human capital investment.