South Korea plans for record spending on jobs creation
- HRM Asia Newsroom
- Topics: Employment Law, News, Recruitment, South Korea
South Korea’s jobs-related budget for 2019 has been set at W23.5 trillion (S$29 billion), a 22% rise from this year’s W19.2 trillion (S$24 billion) as policymakers focus on creating jobs amid a deteriorating job market.
The overall budget is 9.7% higher than this year’s, a record W470.5 trillion won (S$580 billion).
Thanks to higher revenue from robust tax collection, South Korea is expanding the size of fiscal expenditure for next year to add jobs, according to Finance Minister Kim Dong-yeon.
South Korea’s July jobs report showed Asia’s fourth-largest economy added only 5,000 jobs from a year earlier, the smallest annual gain since January 2010 when the economy was still reeling from the global financial crisis.
In particular, the government plans to spend W1.5 trillion in creating jobs for women, such as taking care of senior citizens, as well as W820 billion (S$1 billion) on jobs for senior citizens.
