Labor ministry reports continued employment insurance growth in July

The labor ministry said Monday that employment-insurance rolls reached 15.877 million in July, up 277,000 from a year earlier, extending a seven-month run of increases in the upper 200,000 range.

Service-sector enrollment drove the increase, with enrollment rising by 285,000. Health and social welfare added 112,000 enrollees, while accommodation and food services added 57,000, business services 26,000 and professional, scientific and technical services 23,000.

Manufacturing enrollment fell by 3,000 and construction enrollment declined by 7,000. Manufacturing has declined for 14 straight months and construction for 36, though the pace of contraction eased in both sectors.

"Some industries with strong exports are doing fairly well, but the rest are still not in good shape, so polarization is under way," Jo Won-sik, head of the Future Employment Analysis Division at the Ministry of Employment and Labor, said.

Semiconductor manufacturing added 6,200 enrollees, shipbuilding added 4,800 and special-purpose machinery added 1,900. Automobile manufacturing lost 2,400 enrollees, while employment in synthetic rubber and plastic materials fell by 5,500.

Employment-insurance enrollment among those aged 29 or under fell by 57,000, while all older groups registered increases. The ministry estimated that population decline accounts for about 60 percent of the drop among people in their 20s. Economic weakness and mismatches between available jobs and jobseekers were other pressures on youth employment.

"Companies are cutting open recruitment and focusing on experienced hires, while AI and robot adoption also appears to be costing newcomers and contract workers their jobs, so youth employment will be difficult to recover quickly," Jo said.

New applications for unemployment benefits fell by 2,000, or 2.2 percent, from a year earlier to 109,000, mainly in construction and manufacturing. Jo said a newly designated July public holiday left employment centers with one fewer business day and may have affected the total.

The number of benefit recipients fell by 31,000, or 4.5 percent, to 643,000, while payments declined by 21.8 billion won, or 2.0 percent, to 1.09 trillion won.

Employment24 recorded 177,000 new vacancies, up 13,000 from a year earlier, and 399,000 new jobseekers, down 11,000. The vacancy-to-applicant ratio was 0.44, up from 0.40 a year earlier. The ministry said the figures should be interpreted alongside trends at employers that do not use the platform, whose users are concentrated among firms with 10 to 100 employees and in manufacturing and health and social welfare.