There are more jobs out there, but more of them are part time. One worries that the trend is becoming permanent.
According to the National Statistical Office (NSO), 12.9 percent of the country's workforce works for less than 36 hours a week, as of March 2005. That’s 2 percent higher than the 10.8 percent the same month last year. During the same one-year period the percentage of people working in temporary, day-to-day, or "student" jobs of under 18 hours a week accounted for 27.8 percent. Among those, there are an increasing number of people who want to find regular jobs or have serious jobs but there is not enough work. In the same study last year those individuals numbered 139,000 (20.6%), but last month they numbered 191,000 (22.2%). More than one third of respondents at an internet employment company said they are working "student" jobs instead of enjoying formal employment.
The problem of the quality of employment is a serious one, and hard to measure by simple unemployment figures alone. That is why the rise in part-time workers needs to be looked at closely. It is of course not necessarily a bad thing to have more diverse forms of work. The increase in work by the hour can in certain ways be a widening of opportunities for full-time housewives and senior citizens. But it can become a social problem when young people work by the hour in casual "student" jobs and over the long run lose their ambition to work. Since the financial crisis of 1997 there has been a growth of irregular employment and the number of part-time workers has risen simultaneously, and for that reason as well the problem has to be examined as one of job "quality."
There has been no major change in the unemployment rate, but the number of people who have been unemployed for more than a year was as of March up by 15.3 percent, and the percentage of unemployed who have tried to find jobs but eventually given up 18 percent. Those are figure that have to be paid attention to, because the rise in the number of people who are the worst off in the labor market can lead to a deepening of poverty among low-income citizens and other social disparity.
The Hankyoreh, 21 April 2005.
[Translations by Seoul Selection (PMS)]
Worried About Rise in Part-Time Jobs |
