Seoul, Sep 11 (IANS) Bouyed by government efforts to create jobs, especially among the elderly, and seasonal factors boosting job creation in the agricultural sector, employment in South Korea during August grew the most in the past 11 months — by 432,000 year-on-year to 25.291 million, a government report showed Wednesday.
The seasonally adjusted figure climbed 105,000 last month, up from a 69,000-rise in the prior month, Xinhua reported citing Statistics Korea.
“The government’s projects to boost employment became effective. Most projects, including those creating jobs among the elderly had started from July,” the country’s strategy and finance ministry said in a separate report.
The ministry noted that high temperature and low rainfall boosted employment in the agricultural industry, saying that lodging, restaurants and transport sectors employed more workers due to seasonal factors.
The manufacturing industry created 5,000 jobs in August.
The service sector employed 385,000 workers last month due to seasonal factors, and the agricultural industry added 28,000 labourers. Jobs in the construction sector, however, declined by 7,000.
Helped by the solid job growth, the hiring rate rose 0.03 percentage point from a year earlier to 60 percent in August.
The hiring rate for those in their 50s rose 1.4 percentage points year-on-year to 28.8 percent in August, but the figures for people in their 20s declined 1.4 percentage points in the same period.
Jobless rate was 3 percent in August, unchanged from a year ago. The number of unemployed, who failed to find any work, increased by 19,000 to 783,000 in August.
Unemployment rate among those aged between 15 and 29 rose to 7.6 percent in August from 6.4 percent in the same month last year.
