New employment figures are once again shining a light on the hard time jobseekers are having here in Korea.<br />Government data released on Wednesday shows... only about 1-hundred-20-thousand new jobs were added last month.<br />Kim Hyesung has this report. The number of newly-added jobs in South Korea was just above the 100-thousand mark in April.<br /> Statistics Korea said Wednesday that 26-point-eight million people were employed in Korea last month,... up a mere 123-thousand from the same period last year.<br />In January, job growth was within the 300-thousand range.<br />But it has slumped into the 100-thousand range over the last three months,… marking the worst performance since the 2008 global financial crisis. <br />It's also just a third the level of average jobs growth added last year, which was at around 300-thousand.<br /> New jobs were created in the healthcare and public sector, but the education, services, retail and wholesale sectors saw new job openings drop sharply.<br />In particular, the manufacturing sector saw the number of jobs contracting by nearly 70-thousand, after ten months of growth, amid ongoing restructuring in the shipping and automobile sectors.<br />However,... Statistics Korea added that the shrinking working age population, people between the ages of 15 and 64, was another reason for the slower pace of newly-added jobs.<br /> The overall unemployment rate came in at four-point-one percent last month,... down one-tenth of a percentage point on-year.<br /> Youth unemployment also fell by zero-point-five percentage point, but was still stubbornly high at ten-point-seven percent.<br />Kim Hyesung, Arirang News.<br />
