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Manufacturing job losses trouble Korea
Kim Jin, register-based statistics division director at Statistics Korea, speaks during a press briefing at the Sejong Government Complex, Thursday. Yonhap
By Lee Kyung-min
Eateries, hospitality industry reel due to virus
By Lee Kyung-min
The manufacturing sector shed 65,000 jobs in the second quarter from a year earlier, a highly worrisome downtrend that has continued for the past few quarters driven by the U.S.-China trade feud-oriented economic slowdown compounded further by the COVID-19 pandemic, government data showed Thursday.
Statistics Korea data showed the industry ― a high-quality job creator accounting for 21.9 percent of the total jobs ― has seen visible job losses since the fourth quarter of 2019.
By sector, car manufacturing shed 10,000 jobs, followed by 9,000 each lost in electronics and communications equipment manufacturing and machinery manufacturing.
“The job losses in manufacturing are pronounced amid the pandemic, a trend that began before the spread of the coronavirus,” a statistics agency official said during a briefing at the Sejong Government Complex. They were part of data that showed the economy had 18.89 million jobs in the second quarter, up 211,000, or 1.1 percent from the year before.
The 1.1 percent year-on-year increase is the smallest jump since the first quarter of 2018. The figure is less than half the 428,000 in the first quarter of 2019.
Young people aged under 30 lost 164,000 jobs, whereas 225,000 were added for people aged over 60.
By age, peopled under 20 shed 82,000 jobs, a loss of 2.5 percent from a year earlier, while those aged between 30 and 39 lost 82,000. The increase is attributable mostly to the virus-triggered slowdown in the eateries and hospitality industries, the agency said.
“Many young people who had jobs in those industries have been let go, and older people found jobs in public administration, social welfare and healthcare,” the official said.
Thursday's data showed what the agency defined as “employment position of wage workers,” a concept that differs slightly from monthly jobs data as these are a more detailed way of measuring job market conditions.
For example, if a salaried worker went to work on weekdays and moonlighted as a part-time instructor at a private cram school on weekends, they would be considered one jobholder by monthly jobs data, but a person holding two jobs in the quarterly data.
If a person worked only 15 days a month, they would be considered to have 0.5 jobs, with the hours worked per month used to calculate the sum total.
According to the agency's monthly data, Korea lost 421,000 jobs in October due to the pandemic, the sharpest year-on-year decrease since April's contraction of 476,000.
The loss extending for the eighth consecutive month was a record-long continuation, tied along with the period in 2009 from January to August in the aftermath of the global financial crisis.