Friday, April 11th, 2014
SEOUL, KOREA - Last year's growth rate for new employment has slowed down slightly. Meanwhile, the number of those who have given up looking for jobs has surpassed the 300,000 level for the first time. According to a report "March 2014 Employment Trend" published by the National Statistical Office on April 9, the total number of the employed was 25,163,000, up 649,000 from the same month a year ago. The new jobs number is down somewhat from 705,000 and 835,000 in January and February this year.
The government, however, commented that the upward job trend is still continuing. Oh Sang-woo, Ministry of Strategy & Finance manager responsible for policy planning, said, "The main reasons for the higher-than-expected increase in jobs number in January and February were due to seasonal factors such as the Lunar New Year's Day holiday and unseasonably warm weather. Granted, the March number in the mid-600,000 level is not so disappointing." Indeed, the 649,000 recorded in March is 68 percent higher than that in the same month a year before when the figure was 386,000.
In terms of quarterly figure, the monthly average jobs number between January and March was 730,000, the record-high level since the first quarter of 2002 when the comparable figure was 803,000. However, the number of those who have given up looking for jobs was 334,000, in excess of the 300,000 level for the first time. The unemployed who has given up looking for jobs is defined as someone who has stopped searching for jobs for the past four weeks even though she has looked for jobs for the past one year and is still willing to work.
To this, Gong Mi-sook, National Statistical Office manager in charge of labor statistics, responded, "This is not because the number of those people who really quit looking for jobs has increased, but because we changed the way the statistics is compiled by expanding the definition in order to come up with a new indicator for labor underutilization by the year's end."