[Diary Point | Reporter Kim Jeong-hun] South Korea had 15.974 million active employment insurance subscribers in October, up 286,000 from a year earlier, according to employment administration statistics released Nov. 9 by the Ministry of Employment and Labor. Growth has remained in the high 200,000s for 10 consecutive months, but the number of subscribers age 29 and younger fell by 54,100, marking a 50th straight monthly decline.
Service-sector enrollment rose by 275,600. Health and social welfare services recorded the largest gain, adding 119,500 subscribers, followed by accommodation and food services, up 49,400, and business services, up 23,000.
Manufacturing added 14,100 subscribers, its third consecutive monthly increase. Semiconductor enrollment rose by 7,900, while other transport equipment—a category that includes shipbuilding—added 7,300. Construction lost 5,200 subscribers, extending its decline to 39 months, though the drop was smaller than September’s 5,900.
There were 2.203 million subscribers age 29 and younger. The decline eased slightly, from 54,700 in September to 54,100 in October, but the downward trend continued. Enrollment increased by 204,200 among people 60 and older, 90,800 among those in their 30s, 40,800 among those in their 50s and 4,500 among people in their 40s.
New job openings listed on Work24, the government’s employment portal, totaled 165,000, while new job seekers numbered 360,000; both figures were higher than a year earlier. The job-opening-to-applicant ratio rose to 0.46 from 0.42 in October last year, marking its eighth consecutive monthly increase. The ratio measures openings listed on Work24 per job seeker registered there; it does not include hiring by companies that do not use the portal.
New unemployment benefit claims reached 81,000, up 5,600. The number of benefit recipients, however, fell by 4,100 to 571,000, and total payments declined by 46.8 billion won to 1.0025 trillion won. Cho Won-sik, director of the ministry’s Future Employment Analysis Division, attributed the rise in new claims mainly to “an increase in the number of working days at employment centers.”