Fewer Than 2 in 10 Managed to Climb the Income Ladder

Fewer than 2 in 10 people moved up to a higher income bracket in 2024, the lowest level since related statistics began in 2017. Income mobility — the degree to which people change income classes as their earnings rise or fall — has now declined for four consecutive years, with only 33% of people changing income brackets last year.

The rate of upward income mobility among young people fell to 22.4%, down 0.6 percentage points from the previous year. Choi Ba-wool, head of the Policy Statistics Research Office at the National Data Research Institute, said, "The decline in the share of young people moving up a quintile compared to the previous year warrants continued close attention."

Escaping low income is also becoming harder. The share of those in the bottom 20% income quintile who moved to a higher bracket the following year was 29.3%, down 0.6 percentage points from a year earlier. By contrast, 86.5% of those in the top 20% quintile remained in the same bracket the following year.

The long-term trend also points to class entrenchment. Of those in the bottom 20% of income earners in 2017, about 25% remained in the lowest bracket eight years later. Meanwhile, 56% of the top 20% held onto their highest bracket throughout the entire eight-year period.

Analysts say that as an aging population saps social dynamism and the fruits of economic growth flow more to corporations than to workers, opportunities for upward mobility are shrinking.