A woman walks outside Samsung Electronics' headquarters in Seoul on June 29. (Yonhap) The number of South Korean women who married while unemployed, managing a household or studying fell to about one-fifth of the 2008 level last year, as more women enter the workforce and marry later in life.A total of 33,143 women who married in 2025 were classified as unemployed, homemakers or students, according to data released Monday by Statistics Korea through the Korean Statistical Information Service.The figure was down 78.6 percent from 155,081 in 2008, when the statistics were reorganized under the current classification system.The number fell below 100,000 for the first time in 2016, reaching 90,723, and dropped into the 30,000 range in 2021. However, it rose 2 percent in 2025 from a year earlier.Women classified as unemployed, homemakers or students accounted for 13.8 percent of the 240,326 women who married in 2025.Office workers were the largest employed group, numbering 75,361, or 31.4 percent of the total.Another 45,282 women, or 18.8 percent, were classified as professionals and related workers, a category that includes doctors, judges, prosecutors and lawyers. They outnumbered women who were unemployed, homemakers or students by 12,139.The situation was sharply different in 2008, when 51,223 women who married were professionals and related workers, about one-third of the 155,081 women classified as unemployed, homemakers or students.The gap narrowed over the following decade. Professionals and related workers overtook the unemployed, homemaker and student group for the first time in 2018, with 61,544 compared with 59,778.Among other employed groups, 37,689 women worked in service or sales jobs, 3,950 were managers and 3,689 were elementary school workers.There were also 2,319 workers in craft and related trades, 1,154 skilled agricultural, forestry and fishery workers, and 698 plant and machine operators and assembly workers. Another 37,041 were classified as other or unknown.The shift appears to reflect rising female employment, greater access to professional careers and a tendency among women to marry at a later age.The average age at first marriage for women rose to 31.6 in 2025 from 28.3 in 2008.Over the same period, the employment rate among women ages 30 to 34, the main age group for marriage, increased by 23.2 percentage points from 51.9 percent to 75.1 percent.Dual-income households also reached a record high.Of the 12.65 million households with married couples as of October 2025, 6.15 million were dual-income households, the highest figure since the government began compiling the data.