The proportion of female workers continued to eat into that of male employees. (image: Korea Bizwire)
SEOUL, May 28 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s workforce continued to inch toward female workers, with the number of income earners and those employed in the service industry advancing to record highs, data from the Bank of Korea (BOK) showed Tuesday.
As of end-2015, the total number of employed workers came to 23.83 million, up 2.42 million, or 11.2 percent, from 21.42 million five years earlier, according to the data. The number includes self-employed people and those helping their family members.
The number of employed workers continued to rise from about 10.9 million in 2000, to 14.56 million in 2010, then again to 17.14 million in 2015.
Their proportion in the overall workforce also continued to increase from 58.4 percent in 2000 to 68 percent in 2010 and 71.9 percent in 2015.
Consequently, the number and proportion of self-employed, family-business workers declined from 6.86 million, accounting for 32 percent of the total in 2010, to 6.69 million, or 28.1 percent in 2015.
Both the number of male and female workers increased over the 2010-2015 period, but the proportion of female workers continued to eat into that of male employees.
As of end-2015, the number of male workers came to 14.24 million, up 10.7 percent from 12.85 million at end-2010. The number of female workers jumped 12 percent over the cited period from 8.57 million to 9.59 million, accounting for 40.3 percent of the total workforce in 2015, compared with 40 percent in 2010.
By sector, those employed in the service industry reached a record high of 70.5 percent in 2015, up from 68.9 percent five years earlier, while those working in the farm industry dropped to 5.5 percent from 7.1 percent over the same period.
The proportion of workers employed in the manufacturing industry inched up to 16.6 percent from 16.3 percent over the 2010-2015 period.
Meanwhile, the country’s employment inducement coefficient, or job-creation capacity, dropped sharply from 13.8 in 2010 to 11.8 in 2015, meaning for every 1 billion won (US$843,000) generated, only 11.8 jobs were created in 2010.
(Yonhap)
