Bahk Eun-ji has been with The Korea Times since 2012, building a career across multiple desks. She began at the Business Desk, where she conducted in-depth interviews with key figures in Korea's corporate world. Later, she moved to the Politics & City Desk, focusing on education policy and social affairs. She later served as team leader of the digital content team, leading curation efforts on the newspaper’s homepage and reshaping print stories for social media audiences to enhance digital reach. Now back on the Politics Desk, she covers the National Assembly and the Ministry of National Defense, with a renewed focus on political developments.
Korea's unemployment rate reduces to 3.1 in Oct.
The nation’s unemployment rate reduced in October as manufacturing, facility management and business support services sectors hired more people, according to Statistics Korea Wednesday.
The unemployment rate stood at 3.1 percent last month, down from 3.2 percent in September, the report said. The unemployment rate also decreased 0.1 percentage point on-year, the first time since November 2013 that it has reduced from a previous year.
The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for October was 3.4 percent, also down from 3.5 percent tallied for the previous month.
Meanwhile, the number of new jobs inched up to 348,000 last month, the highest since 379,000 in May and up marginally from 347,000 new positions offered in September.
The manufacturing sector created 191,000 more jobs, with facility management and business support services adding 104,000 available positions. The IT sector, which includes broadcasting and health services, provided 79,000 and 62,000 more jobs last month, respectively, compared with a year earlier.
In contrast, the agriculture and fisheries sectors lost 124,000 jobs with wholesale and retail losing 92,000 employed personnel compared to last year.