By Kim Tae-jong
The number of people who are actually unemployed has reached 4 million as a growing number of people are giving up on looking for work amid the prolonged economic slump, latest data showed Friday.
According to Statistics Korea, the actual number of jobless, including those who have no work but are not officially listed as unemployed, totaled 3,897,000 in November.
From these figures, the true unemployment rate would be 15.7 percent.
This figure is way higher than “official” statistics for the number of jobless people, which stood at 695,000 in November, an unemployment rate of 2.8 percent.
The mismatch suggests that the official rate does not capture the real pain in the labor market. The jobless rate that the government calculates includes only those without jobs who are actively searching for work.
But the actual number is much larger if “hidden” unemployment is considered.
People who are currently in full-time education are excluded from the official statistics, with the figure standing at 592,000.
In addition, 193,000 people who have given up looking for work and the 1,026,000 taking time off are not counted.
Also 980,000 people who work less than 18 hours per week are not listed as unemployed.
The high level of those actually unemployed is attributed to the economic downturn, which is hurting overall job creation, the statistics agency said.
The actual number of those unemployed stood at fewer than 3.5 million in 2007 and 2008 before the global financial crisis impacted the local economy but rose to 3.89 million in 2009 and 4 million in 2010. It decreased slightly to 3.94 million in 2011 and 3.89 million last year.
Experts point out that the domestic job market has structural problems, which the official unemployment rate fails to reveal.
“We have maintained a very low unemployment rate of less than 3 percent but the problem is that a lot of the economically inactive are not counted in the statistics because they are not officially listed as unemployed, even though they have no job,” said Korea Development Institute (KDI) economist Hwang Soo-kyeong.
Compared to other developed countries, young people spend too much time preparing for examinations before looking for a job, and a number of women give up seeking work and stay at home as full-time housewives, which has a negative impact on economic growth, she said.
“The nation doesn’t seem to have much of a problem in terms of official unemployment but we need to take a close look at the job market and make efforts to increase the employment to population ratio by helping the economically inactive find work.”
President-elect Park Geun-hye has pledged to increase the employment to population ratio to 70 percent from the current 63 percent by creating 1.5 million more jobs.
But civic groups are demanding that the government should also focus on enhancing job quality as well as quantity.
“Many newly-created positions in recent months are not permanent ones but rather temporary,” said Han Ji-hye, chairman of Youth Community Union. “Young people spend too much time preparing to look for a job. Cutting working hours and creating more jobs could be a solution,” she said.