Unemployment stabilizes

Youth jobless rate falls 0.9% point to 7.6% in July

By Kang Seung-woo

Korea’s labor market conditions continued to improve in July, as the nation’s jobless rate fell from a year ago, helped by solid exports and growing industrial production, a government report showed Wednesday.

According to the latest figures from Statistics Korea, the country’s unemployment rate for last month was 3.3 percent, down 0.4 percentage point from a year ago. The June reading for the jobless rate also stood at 3.3 percent, down 0.2 percentage point year-on-year.

As for youth unemployment, the biggest headache for the government and policymakers, its rate for those aged between 15 and 29 registered 7.6 percent last month, down from 8.5 percent at the same time last year.

Since May, when it increased by 0.9 percentage point from the same period a year earlier, the youth jobless rate has been sliding on a year-on-year basis.

The unemployment rate of those actively searching for work aged between 25 and 29 has also been on the decline.

According to the report, the unemployment rate for this age category was 5.5 percent for June, down 1.9 percentage points year-on-year to mark a decline for the second straight month. The figure for May was 6.1 percent, down from 6.4 last year.

The report showed that the nation’s employment rate reached 60 percent, up 0.2 percentage point from a year ago, with the number of jobs rising by 335,000 to total 24.63 million on payrolls.

The state-run office said that with the increase, Korea, Asia’s fourth-largest economy, extended its steady addition of more than 300,000 positions to the 10th straight month, the longest streak since December 2002, when the extension stretched to 21 consecutive months.

The statistical office said the employment market has been growing steadily since January 2010 thanks to the ongoing economic recovery and overall improvement in the country’s labor market.

It also said that the number of permanent employees rose, while those in temporary positions dropped from a year earlier.

A total of 439,000 people landed a regular job in July, but the number of temporary employees and those working on a daily basis fell by 78,000 and 94,000, respectively.

Meanwhile, the number of people who failed to land work despite their job-hunting efforts stood at 837,000, down 95,000 year-on-year, the report said.