Ultra-short-hour workers rise to 5-year high in S. Korea

Employees in South Korea who work for ultra-short hours a week rose to the highest in five years as companies refrained from hiring regular workers amid the government-led flexible working system, statistical agency data showed on Monday.

The number of people who work for less than 17 hours a week reached 1.343 million in the July-September quarter, up 91,000 from the same period of last year, according to Statistics Korea. It was the highest since the reading touched 1.54 million in the third quarter of 2011.

The government initially introduced flexible work hours for women who stop working due to marriage and child rearing as part of efforts to encourage such women to have job opportunities.

Boosted by the government-led flexible working system, however, companies created irregular or part-time jobs instead of recruiting regular workers amid the prolonged economic downturn.

Economic slump had led to an increase in ultra-short-hour workers here as seen during the 1998 Asian financial crisis and following the 2008 global financial crisis.

In the fourth quarter of 1998, ultra-short-hour workers jumped 226,000 compared with a year earlier, with the figure for the first quarter of 1999 surging by 244,000. Readings in the fourth quarter of 2009 and the first quarter of 2010 increased 143,000 and 178,000 each.

Rising employees working for ultra-short hours speed up economic slowdown as the increase in irregular or part-time workers indicate a fall in potential consumers, leading to a slump in private consumption and the subsequent decline in corporate earnings.

The upward trend in involuntary short-hour workers has faded up recently. The number of ultra-short-hour workers jumped 7.2 percent in the third quarter, while overall employment rose 1.2 percent. In the second quarter, ultra-short-hour workers picked up 4.4 percent, higher than a 1.1-percent growth in overall employment. Enditem