In the United States, state and local government budgets have been suffering the repercussions of the economic downturn that hit the world since 2008. Lagging revenues have resulted from lower property and income taxes as real estate values and the size of the job market precipitously fell for the past three years. Moreover, public spending at local and state levels had been rising, much thanks to the government’s massive stimulus of fiscal appropriations on the state level, supporting and expanding public payrolls for the past year.

There’s one aspect to financial markets and individuals’ livelihood, which has become commonplace to economies around the world. Like the proverbial 900 pound gorilla in the room, the risks tied to stagnant labor markets are obvious. This week we’ll be focusing on the state of the labor market in Korea and how it compares to other developed markets abroad. We will identify differences in labor conditions and data collection, then look at ways that Korea can improve its employment situation for future success.

In 1933 the Gold Standard was pushed aside and the United States Dollar (USD) officially became tied to nothing. Later in 1944, during a gathering of global leaders in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, international exchange rate policies were put in place to assure the system of “floating” global currencies. Yet it would be the Mr. John Maynard Keynes who went on to define this exchange of paper money as “fiat currency”, or money where the “material substance… is divorced from its monetary value”.