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Last month, the number of employed people decreased by more than 400,000 from a year ago, and the largest decline in six months.
It is far from the government's expectations that the job market will improve.
Reporter Hwa Kang-yoon reports.
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Last month, the number of employed people decreased by 421,000 from a year ago.
The decline was larger than in September.
This is far from the expectations of Deputy Prime Minister Hong Nam-ki last month, who said that the employment situation will improve from October.
In particular, the number of people in the manufacturing industry declined by nearly 100,000, with a larger decline than in September.
[Dong-myeong Jeong/Director of Social Statistics Bureau of Statistics Korea: The decline in the number of employed continues steadily in the automobile and trailer manufacturing industries, and in the metal and processed product manufacturing industries...
.] In the
middle of last month, social distancing was eased to the first stage, but the decline in the number of employed in the lodging-food industry was similar to that of September.
As companies postpone or give up hiring new jobs, the decline in the number of employed people in their twenties widened and the employment rate fell by more than 3 percentage points.
The overall unemployment rate was 3.7%, up 0.7 percentage points from a year ago, the highest in 20 years as of October.
The government explained that the improvement in the economic situation seemed to be slower than expected because there was a lag in leading to employment.
In addition, the number of employed people, which eliminated seasonal factors, increased by 54,000 compared to September. If this trend is the case, they are optimistic that the employment situation will improve in November.
(Video coverage: Kim Min-cheol, Video editing: Park Jin-hoon)