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Roundup: S.Korea's youth unemployment rate hits record high in February

Xinhua, March 16, 2016 Adjust font size:

Unemployment rate among South Korean youths hit a record high in February, reflecting worse-than-ever labor market conditions amid the lackluster economy, a government report showed on Wednesday.

Jobless rate among youths aged 15-29 reached 12.5 percent in February, the highest since comparable data was available in June 1999, according to Statistics Korea.

The figure continued to rise from 7.4 percent in October to 8.1 percent in November and 8.4 percent in December, before advancing to 9.5 percent in January.

In February when college graduates usually rush to labor market for job search, the youth unemployment rate tended to get higher, but this year's figure unusually became higher due to worse-than-ever labor market conditions.

The official unemployment rate gauges the percentage of those unemployed who actively sought jobs in the past four weeks to the sum of those employed and unemployed.

The number of youths unemployed stood at 560,000 in February, up 76,000 from a year ago.

As companies showed reluctance to hire workers, college graduates rushed to civil service examination. Civil servants are regarded as a job guaranteeing job security more strongly than office workers.

Overall unemployment rate was 4.9 percent in February, up 0.3 percentage points from a year earlier. It marked the highest in about six years since February 2010.

The so-called sentiment jobless rate, which the statistical agency began to unveil in November 2014, was 12.3 percent in February, the highest in about a year.

The sentiment rate includes part-time workers who hope to get a regular job working more than 36 hours a week and those who want to work but reply during the job survey period that they conducted no job-searching efforts in the past four weeks.

The employment rate fell 0.1 percentage point from a year earlier to 58.7 percent in February, but the OECD-method hiring rate among those aged 15-64 inched up 0.1 percentage point to 65.0 percent.

The hiring rate measures the percentage of working people to the working age population, or those aged 15 or more. It is used as an alternative to jobless rate, and the government set its target at 70 percent in the long term.

The number of those employed totaled 25,418,000 in February, up 223,000 from a year earlier. It posted the lowest monthly increase in 10 months. The job growth surged to 495,000 in December 2015, but it turned downward to 339,000 in January and 223,000 in February.

Job increase was centered on those in their 50s or older. Job creation among those in their 50s and 60s reached 77,000 and 158,000 each last month, with those in their 20s and 40s rising 18,000 and 15,000 respectively. The figure for those in their 30s reduced 44,000 in February.

Manufacturers employed 108,000 workers in February, logging the increase of more than 100,000 for 22 months in a row. Service companies roughly added jobs in most of sectors, but agricultural industries reduced 61,000 jobs in February from a year ago.

The number of regular workers increased 496,000 in February from a year earlier, but those working on a daily basis and irregular workers declined 9,000 and 111,000 each. Enditem