Job seekers receive assistance from officials while registering at the 2024 Seoul Job Fair for Middle-Aged and Senior Individuals at Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP) in Seoul, South Korea, on July 22. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, July 30 (Korea Bizwire) – The number of senior citizens engaged in economic activities reached an all-time high this year, data showed Tuesday.
Of the country’s 15.98 million people aged 55-79, 60.6 percent were economically active as of May, up 0.4 percentage point from a year earlier, according to the data compiled by Statistics Korea.
The figure encompasses the currently employed, as well as those actively seeking to land a job.
The number of the employed among the age group rose by 316,000 on-year to 9.44 million, and the employment rate came to 59 percent, a record level.
Both the sheer number of working seniors and their proportion were the largest ever, the agency said.
The growth came as those who got a job in the health care and social welfare service sector went up by 126,000 to 1.21 million.
The number of those working for the agricultural and fishery industries came to 1.17 million, and it marked the first time that the health care and welfare sector had a greater number of senior workers than the farming field.
The number of the unemployed and those in search of job opportunities also grew 46,000 from a year before to 247,000 this year, with the unemployment rate standing at 2.5 percent, according to the agency.
(Yonhap)
