코로나, 청년 일자리부터 덮쳤다…4월 42만개•9월 50만개 증발<br /><br />South Korea, like other countries, has seen massive job losses because of the pandemic.<br />Data show last month employment was down for a seventh month in a row... compared to last year.<br />Bearing the brunt of these losses are South Korea's young people, as our Eum Ji-young reports.<br />The COVID-19 outbreak is wreaking havoc on South Korea's job market.<br />According to job data released by Korea Development Institute on Wednesday, around 830-thousand jobs were lost last month amid the resurgence of COVID-19.<br />And the latest employment data from Statistics Korea shows that young people have been the worst hit by the jobs cull.<br />Young people between 15 and 39 saw huge on-year job losses in April, just after the first peak of COVID-19 in the country, and they saw more mass job cuts after another spike in cases in September.<br />( 1) In April, that age group had roughly 420-thousand fewer jobs than a year earlier, ( 2), and in September they had about 500-thousand fewer jobs on-year.<br />One expert says young people were hit hardest as the majority of them work in the service sector.<br />"Due to the risk of getting infected, demand for local service businesses plunged. Related jobs were lost at a fast pace and some of them were replaced with online or non-contact services."<br />He added that local service businesses related to healthcare, beauty, leisure, education and travel were hit hardest when there were surges in infections.<br />The biggest job losses in September were in the restaurant and lodging sectors, which recorded a 10 percent fall or 225-thousand fewer jobs last month than a year earlier.<br />About 62 percent of the on-year job losses in the restaurant and lodging sectors were among those aged between 15 and 39.<br />People in that bracket also accounted for about 85 percent of the on-year decline in education jobs.<br />The total number of jobs in the restaurant, lodging and wholesale sectors also hit a seven-and-a-half year low,... at around five-point-five million jobs.<br />It showed nine straight months of on-year decline as the self-employed in those sectors were also hit hard as a result of the stricter social distancing measures.<br />Eum Ji-young, Arirang News.<br />
