South Korea Unemployment Rate Hits Highest Level in 21 Years

[Asia Economy Reporter Kwon Jae-hee] Amid soaring unemployment rates among OECD member countries due to the impact of COVID-19, the average unemployment rate in January this year remained steady at 6.8%. Meanwhile, South Korea's unemployment rate, although lower than this average, has rapidly worsened, reaching its highest level in over 21 years.

According to the January unemployment statistics compiled by the OECD on the 14th in accordance with the International Labour Organization (ILO) guidelines, the average unemployment rate among OECD member countries was 6.8%, the same as in December last year.

The unemployment rates of OECD member countries surged to an average of 8.8% in April last year due to the impact of COVID-19 but have gradually improved since then. The United States, for example, had an unemployment rate of 14.8% in April last year, which decreased to around 6.3% in January this year.

Of course, all OECD member countries still have higher unemployment rates compared to February last year, before the impact of COVID-19.

In contrast, South Korea's unemployment rate has been worsening compared to other OECD member countries.

South Korea's unemployment rate in January was 5.4%, worsening by 0.9 percentage points from the previous month, marking the highest level since October 1999.

South Korea's unemployment rate has shown a worsening trend since September last year.

The silver lining is that the absolute level of unemployment is relatively low, ranking 18th among the 27 OECD member countries for which statistics are compiled.

However, when looking at the January unemployment rate by age group, South Korea's youth (ages 15?24) unemployment rate is higher than that of the United States (11.2%), ranking 15th out of 25 countries.

Additionally, South Korea's unemployment rate by gender shows that males have a rate of 4.9%, females 6.1%, with a gender gap of 1.2 percentage points, which is larger than the OECD average gap of 0.4 percentage points.

The OECD average gender unemployment gap widened to 0.9 percentage points in April last year but has gradually narrowed, becoming almost similar to 0.3 percentage points in February last year.