Number of South Koreans outside labour force drops
- Charles Chau
- Topics: Home Page - News, News, Recruitment, South Korea
“The slight drop comes as an increasing number of people are willing to work amid signs of a recovery in the job market,” said Statistics Korea.
People outside the labour force accounted for 37.2% of all South Koreans aged 15 and older, a drop of 0.4 percentage point from a year earlier, data from Statistics Korea showed.
Meanwhile, the number of non-economically active people, or those who have no willingness to work, was 16.76 million as of end-August, a decrease of 106,000 from a year earlier.
Out of this group of non-economically active people, 3.99 million want to get jobs or set up shop within one year, up 2.2% from a year earlier. The figure represents the largest number since similar data were tracked in 2016.
READ: South Korea’s wage divide between sectors widens
Statistics Korea’s data also showed 870,000 non-economically active people were preparing for employment – also the largest-ever tally, according to Yonhap.
South Korea’s total labour force saw a dip from 28.28 million in July to 28.19 million in August before rising again to 28.30 million in September, according to Moody’s Analytics.
