South Korea’s employment rose by 123,000 year-on-year in August

SEOUL, Sept. 11 (Xinhua) — South Korea’s job growth exceeded 100,000 for the second consecutive month, driven by a rapid expansion of jobs for senior citizens, data from the National Statistics Bureau showed on Wednesday.

The number of employed people aged 15 and over rose by 123,000 in August from a year earlier to 28,801,000, following an increase of 172,000 in the previous month, according to Statistics Korea.

Overall employment growth was driven by older workers. The number of jobs for people aged 60 and over rose by 231,000 year-over-year in August, while the number of jobs for people aged 30 and 50 rose by 99,000 and 3,000, respectively.

The number of jobs among 15-29 year-olds fell by 142,000 last month, while jobs among 40-year-olds fell by 68,000.

The number of jobs increased by 63,000, 101,000 and 94,000 respectively in the health and social care, information and communications, and transport and warehousing sectors.

Manufacturing employment fell by 35,000 in August compared with the same month last year, marking the second consecutive month of decline.

The number of job losses in the construction and wholesale and retail trade sectors amounted to 84,000 and 55,000 in each of these sectors, respectively.

The number of permanent and casual workers rose by 99,000 and 191,000 respectively, but the number of casual workers fell by 101,000 last month.

The number of self-employed people with employees increased by 26,000, but the number of self-employed people with no employees decreased by 64,000.

The employment rate among people aged 15 and over rose 0.1 percentage point from a year earlier to 63.2 percent in August.

The number of unemployed people in August was 564,000, down 9,000 from the same month last year. The unemployment rate fell 0.1 percentage point to 1.9 percent.

The extended unemployment rate fell by 0.2 percentage points to 8.3 percent in the month, while the corresponding rate for those aged 15-29 decreased by 1.0 percentage points to 14.7 percent.

The official unemployment rate includes people who are available to start work immediately but have been unable to find work in the past four weeks despite actively trying to look for work.

The expanded unemployment rate, known as the labour underutilisation rate, includes in the official unemployment rate those who are discouraged from looking for work, those who work part-time rather than full-time, and those preparing to take up employment after completing their studies.

The number of economically inactive people, i.e. those who did not want to look for a job and remained unemployed, increased by 48 thousand compared to the previous year and reached 16,211,000 in August.

The number of discouraged job seekers fell by 40,000 last month to 366,000.

The number of people in the “resting” group, who responded that they were resting while the job search was ongoing, rose from 245,000 to 2,567,000 in the same month.

The “resting” group is considered important because it may include people who are too discouraged to look for work for an extended period of time.