By Lee Hyo-sik
Staff Reporter
The nation's job growth rose to an 10-month high in September on the back of the government's temporary employment of workers in various public sectors and slowly rebounding corporate hiring, Statistics Korea said Wednesday.
The job market here has been sluggish at a time when the economy has been steadily recovering and industrial output and other macroeconomic indicators have been showing an upward curve.
But the September data is seen as a signal that the labor sector has finally emerged from a dark tunnel, adding to the optimism that Asia's fourth-largest economy is on a solid recovery path.
The number of employed people stood at 23.81 million last month, up 71,000 from a year earlier, the largest increase since November 2008 when 77,000 new positions were created. The nation saw job increases of 4,000 in June and 3,000 in August, respectively. This is in stark contrast to May, when 219,000 jobs disappeared from the previous year, marking the highest year-on-year job loss since March 1999 when the country lost 390,000 positions as a result of massive corporate layoffs following the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis.
The number of unemployed came to 826,000 in September, up 103,000 from the previous year, with the jobless rate rising to 3.4 percent from 3 percent. But the rate hit its lowest level since December last year when it stood at 3.3 percent, indicating the worst is over for the domestic job market.
``The public job program in which participants provide various social services in return for minimum wage increased the number of workers. Additionally, the pace of job losses in the manufacturing and construction sectors slowed, bolstered by strong exports and new public works and housing projects,'' Statistics Korea official Jeong In-sook said.
She said the overall employment conditions are improving but unless the corporate sector begins hiring thousands of university graduates again, Korea's job market will remain in a slump. ``It all depends on how many jobs the private sector creates in the future.''
The number of construction workers declined by 75,000 in September from the same month in 2008, while those in the manufacturing sector and the retail and wholesale sector fell 118,000 and 158,000, respectively. The public and private service sectors added 431,000 new workers to their payrolls.
The number of employed people in their 20s and 30s fell by 137,000 and 138,000, respectively, but the number of workers in their 50s increased by 240,000.
The economically inactive population totaled 15.57 million last month, up 335,000 from the previous year, with the number of those who gave up the job search jumped by 19,000 to 155,000.
Additionally, Korea's unemployment rate in August grew at the third-slowest clip among the 30 member economies of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The jobless rate here rose by 0.6 percentage points to 3.8 percent in August from a year earlier, higher than only those of Belgium (0.4 percentage points) and Germany (0.5 percentage points). The OECD unemployment rate jumped by an average of 2.3 percentage points, with Spain's jobless rate surging by 7.1 percentage points.
leehs@koreatimes.co.kr
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