The number of women living in Gyeonggi Province rose from 6.32 million in 2016 to 6.83 million in 2025. That is an increase of 8.1%. Over the same period, the share of the working-age population aged 15-64 among all women fell from 73.1% to 69.5%, down 3.6 percentage points. The number of people grew and the working-age band thinned.
The Job Research Center at the Gyeonggido Job Foundation released its report "Analysis of Labor Market Conditions in Gyeonggi Province" on the 10th. The report proposes moving the center of women's employment policy from "expanding the number of employed" to "continued employment and career building." It proposes taking how many years those who enter stay, in place of how many people were placed in jobs, as the performance indicator.
For men, the working-age share over the same period also fell, from 75.6% to 72.4%, down 3.2 percentage points. The decline for women is 0.4 percentage points steeper.
The share was not the only thing that changed. The number of unmarried women rose from 1.3 million to 1.57 million, up 20.5%, while the national increase over the same period was 10.1%. The increase in Gyeonggi Province is about twice as large. Households raising infants and young children fell from 560,000 to 390,000, down 30.5%, and as two-child and three-child households dropped away, the center shifted toward one-child households.
Educational attainment rose. Women who graduated from four-year universities increased by 42.7%, those with master's degrees by 49.9%, and those with doctorates by 67.8%.
The places where women work are still concentrated in a few industries. As of 2025, 82.4% of workers in health and social welfare services were women. Education services followed at 70.2%, accommodation and food services at 61.9%, and finance and insurance at 50.9%. These are also industries where working hours are the first thing adjusted when the economy wavers.
Even within the same province, conditions differ between the south and the north. In southern Gyeonggi, the industry employing the most women is manufacturing with 323,184, followed by wholesale and retail with 296,847. In the north, wholesale and retail is the largest with 118,711, followed by education services with 94,244 and accommodation and food services with 88,280. The south has manufacturing and the north does not.
The prescription the report offers therefore starts from the phrase "living zone." It calls for finding jobs close to the neighborhoods where people live, designing support to match the life cycle, and expanding tiered training and online education so that people from different fields of study and people whose careers were interrupted can also enter. Underlying it is the awareness that once someone quits, there is no route back.
Lim Da-hee, a research fellow at the Gyeonggido Job Foundation, pointed together to the decline in working-age women, aging, and changes in the industrial landscape.
The range this report shows extends to changes in population composition. How much women in Gyeonggi Province are actually working, and how many have had their careers interrupted, were not included in this analysis. For the proposal to shift the axis of policy to gain persuasive force, that report card has to come next.
In place of counting performance by the number of successful job placements, the report proposes asking how many are still doing the same work three years later. The foundation raised this question over data showing that among the 6.83 million women in Gyeonggi Province, the working-age band has thinned to 69.5%.
