Low wages and seniority-based salary system drive South Korean AI talent overseas

This illustration taken on October 27th shows the LinkedIn app icon on a smartphone. [REUTERS/YONHAP]

Salaries for artificial intelligence experts in South Korea are much lower than in the United States, and a seniority-based pay system is accelerating the exodus of talent overseas, a report found on Friday.

Workers with AI skills earned 6 percent more last year than those without such skills, according to Bank of Korea (BOK) Labor Market Research Team and Park Geun-young, a professor at the National University of Singapore Business School.

The report defines AI talent as workers who have at least one of 12 skills related to AI, such as machine learning and big data.

The AI ​​premium has steadily increased from 1.3% in 2010. Still, South Korea lags behind major economies. AI wage premiums are 25 percent in the US, 18 percent in Canada, and around 15 percent in the UK, France, and Australia.

“In 2024, Korean AI talent working overseas will account for about 16%, 6 percentage points higher than other workers,” said Oh Sam-il, an economist at the Bank of Korea.

He added: “The number of Koreans with AI skills working in the US rose to 6,300 last year as the large number of jobs and high pay in the US AI industry attracted domestic talent overseas.”

Last year, about 11,000 Korean AI experts worked overseas, more than half of them based in the United States.

“AI workers tend to be younger because interest in AI started to grow in the early 2010s,” said Seo Dong-hyun, an economist at the Bank of Korea. “Korea's seniority-based wage system is certainly at a disadvantage.”

The study analyzed more than 1.1 million Korean workers and more than 10 million work history records from 2010 to 2024.

The researchers also surveyed human resources managers at nearly 400 companies and used profile data from global hiring platform LinkedIn to assess the size, pay, and mobility of their AI talent pool.

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter using generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
Written by Kim Cheol-eun [[email protected]]