Young Car Buyers Hit a Decade Low: What’s Driving the Change?

About a quarter of new car registrations in the first half of this year were filed by people in their 20s and 30s, the lowest figure in the past decade, data provided by automobile information website showed Tuesday.

According to Car Is You, a website offering insights into local and international auto markets, 29,066 new cars were purchased by individuals in their 20s during the first six months of this year. This accounts for just 5.7 percent of all new vehicles sold in the country during that period.

The proportion of cars bought by 20-somethings has been declining steadily since 2016, when it peaked at 8.8 percent.

For the first time, the percentage of new cars bought by Koreans in their 30s is on the brink of falling below 20 percent. They purchased 99,611 new vehicles, representing only 19.5 percent of total new car sales. This figure has been consistently decreasing since 2016, when it stood at 25.9 percent.

More older people are buying new cars
Young adults are increasingly opting out of car ownership, instead turning to car-sharing platforms like SoCar. In 2024, SoCar reported that its membership had surpassed 10 million, representing nearly one-third of all licensed drivers in the country.

In 2023, 53 percent of all SoCar users were in their 30s, with the average user age being 32.9.

On the flip side, 18 percent of all new car purchases in the first half of the year were made by drivers in their 60s, nearly doubling from 9.6 percent in 2016. The percentage of new cars bought by those in their 70s also increased during the same period, rising from 2.8 percent to 4.5 percent.

Experts attribute this trend to the growing number of senior citizens who continue working beyond the legal retirement age of 60.

According to a Statistics Korea report in June, 7.05 million people aged 60 and up were employed in May this year, marking an all-time high. This figure represents a staggering increase of over 3 million compared to the 3.96 million recorded in 2016.