SEOUL, June 7 (Korea Bizwire) — Business lobby groups in 18 countries forecast the global economy to contract 4 percent this year due to the impact of the new coronavirus outbreak, a South Korean industry association said Sunday. The 4 percent negative growth outlook is worse than the International Monetary Fund’s forecast of a 3 [...]
SEOUL, June 4 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s state employment insurance scheme could run out of money this year if the novel coronavirus continues to hit the country’s job market until year-end, a report said Thursday. The report from the National Assembly Budget Office estimated that the number of unemployment benefit recipients could reach 1.84 [...]
SEOUL, May 31 (Korea Bizwire) — The volume of short-term floating capital in South Korea hit an all-time high of more than 1,100 trillion won (US$888 billion) amid low interest rates and increased uncertainties over the novel coronavirus pandemic, data showed Sunday. Cash and other forms of short-term capital, including demand deposits and money market [...]
SEJONG, May 21 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s household income rose in the first quarter from a year earlier, but the income gap between the haves and have-nots widened, as the employment situation of the low-income bracket worsened amid the coronavirus pandemic, a report showed Thursday. The average household earned 5.35 million won (US$4,357) per [...]
SEOUL, May 20 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korea’s household debt grew at the slowest pace in one year in the first quarter, central bank data showed Wednesday, amid a sharp decline in spending apparently caused by the new coronavirus outbreak that is expected to hurt the whole economy. Outstanding household credit came to 1,611.3 trillion [...]
SEJONG, May 10 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s per capita national debt has surpassed 14 million won (US$11,500) and is expected to go up due to a spending hike meant to mitigate the economic fallout from the coronavirus outbreak, data showed Sunday. The data posted on the website of the National Assembly Budget Office showed [...]
SEOUL, May 4 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s labor productivity growth has sharply slowed over the past decade due partly to a lack of investment and innovation, a study suggested Monday. According to You Hye-mi, a professor from Seoul’s Hanyang University, the country’s labor productivity rose at an annual average of 2.67 percent between the [...]
SEOUL, April 20 (Korea Bizwire) – The government should take aggressive measures to prevent a possible jump in unemployment due to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, a private think tank said Monday. The Korea Economic Research Institute (KERI) said it has proposed a list of 10 labor policy tasks to the labor ministry in [...]
SEOUL, April 20 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s economy is expected to report a 1.81 percent on-quarter contraction in the first quarter of the year, a poll showed Monday, as the coronavirus pandemic crippled industrial output, consumer spending and job markets in Asia’s fourth-largest economy. It would be the sharpest quarterly contraction since the fourth [...]
SEOUL, April 13 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s economy may start to get back on the normalization track next month at the earliest, recovering from the economic fallout from the novel coronavirus, a report suggested Monday. The report from the Hana Institute of Finance said the number of new coronavirus infection cases in China peaked [...]