4월 취업자 17만1천명 증가...실업률은 19년 만에 최고
Despite the government's efforts to boost the sluggish job market.... job figures for the month of April were pretty anemic,... as our Kim Da-mi reports.
The number of employed people in South Korea reached 27-million in April, an increase of 171-thousand from the same month of last year.
But according to Statistics Korea on Wednesday, this is the first time in three months,... that the on-year increase has been below the 200-thousand mark, mainly due to the drop in the number of retail and wholesale jobs.
Despite the on-year increase, experts are concerned about the overall quality of the new jobs.
"Around 300-thousand people aged above 65 have been hired recently, but this is merely temporary because their jobs are low-quality, short-term jobs. So the job increase last month is not necessarily great news overall."
Meanwhile, the country’s unemployment rate rose to 4-point-4 percent last month, up zero-point-3 percentage points from a year earlier.
This is a record high for any month of April since 2000.
Statistics Korea highlighted that the deadline for local civil service job applications moved from March to April,... and that this is part of the reason for the poor figures for April.
The social and technology services sectors accounted for most of the job gains,... but the number of retail and manufacturing jobs decreased.
The number of manufacturing jobs has been on a decline for 13 straight months since April 2018.
Meanwhile, South Korea's finance ministry noted that the government has managed to create more than 150,000 new jobs for 3 consecutive months.
However, as the number of jobs in the main productive working age group in their 30s and 40s slumped, Finance Minister Hong Nam-ki said that the government will continue to work to improve the job market
KIM Da-mi, Arirang News.
