South Korea’s on-year job addition dipped below the 300,000 mark for the second straight month in October as small-scale employers and merchants reduced hiring ahead of the double-digit spike in minimum wage, aggravating tight job market for the youth.

According to October employment data released by the Statistics Korea on Wednesday, the number of employed in November stood at 26,845,000, up 253,000 from the same month last year.

The on-year addition has kept bouncing up and down but stayed mostly above the 300,000 mark throughout this year. It sunk below the level in October and again in November. The last time job increases hovered below the threshold for two months in a row was December last year.

By sector, public services, healthcare, construction added jobs in November while jobs in media, hotel and restaurant, and finance sectors contracted compared to a year earlier.

Regularly-paying factory jobs gained by 46,000 on year and maintained growth for the sixth straight month. The number of self-employed rose 40,000 on year, slightly slowing down from October with 43,000.

The employment rate in November inched up 0.1 percentage point to 61.2 percent from a year ago. The employment rate of people aged between 15 and 64, the standard of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), rose 0.4 percentage point on year to 67.0 percent.

The jobless rate came at 3.2 percent, up 0.1 percentage point from a year earlier. It is the highest since November 2009 with 3.3 percent.

Youth jobless rate jumped 1.0 percentage point to 9.2 percent. The figure is the highest for the month of November since the statistics office started compiling such data in 1999. The real youth unemployment rate that reflects the actual number of unemployed including part-time workers and people in between jobs seeking full-time employment ticked up 0.1 percentage point on year to 21.4 percent, the highest for the month since 2015.

By Yoon Won-sup and Cho Jeehyun

[ⓒ Pulse by Maeil Business Newspaper & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]