SEJONG - South Korea added 108,000 jobs from a year earlier in July, even as employment among young people continued a prolonged decline.
The figures form part of South Korea’s monthly Economically Active Population Survey, the government’s primary employment statistics series. July’s year-on-year increase was stronger than in the previous two months, while the unemployment rate stood at 2.6%.
Employment had risen by 63,000 from a year earlier in June, after declining by 40,000 in May. The June total was 29.154 million employed people, according to the Ministry of Data and Statistics.
The improvement in the headline employment figure remained uneven across age groups. Employment among people aged 15 to 29 fell by about 191,000 from a year earlier in July, extending the prolonged weakness in youth employment.
The latest drop followed a decline of 197,000 youth jobs in June. The youth employment rate that month was 43.9%, down 1.7 percentage points from a year earlier, underscoring the persistent weakness facing younger workers even as nationwide employment returned to year-on-year growth.
Manufacturing employment also remained weak in July. The sector had lost 97,000 jobs from a year earlier in June, when manufacturing employment recorded its 24th consecutive monthly decline.
The government has said it plans to announce a comprehensive youth employment package in the third quarter. It has also been preparing tailored responses for industries with weak employment conditions, including manufacturing and construction.
Bin Hyun-joon, director general of the Social Statistics Bureau at the Ministry of Data and Statistics, said structural changes in recruitment, including a shift away from large-scale open recruitment toward experienced-worker hiring and internships, appear to be making entry into the labor market more difficult for young people.
“Compared with the past, it appears to have become somewhat harder for young people to get a job straight away,” he said at the government’s June employment briefing on July 15.
