Seoul To Announce Measures To Achieve Job Goal This Year

Mohammad Ali (@ChaudhryMAli88) Published October 14, 2018 | 04:30 PM

SEOUL, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 14th Oct, 2018 ) :South Korea will announce a set of measures later this month to help generate new jobs as it views the country's employment as being "at a critical situation" based on data, its finance minister said Sunday.

For job creation, the government will focus on encouraging businesses to make investments by easing regulations, supporting innovative growth in businesses, and providing customized jobs to local provinces and industries, Finance Minister Kim Dong-yeon said in a meeting with reporters in Bali.

He is visiting Indonesia to attend the Group of 20 finance ministers' meeting and the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.

Kim said the finance ministry is in consultations with other economic policymakers, the ruling party and the presidential office to come up with the measures. The government already said it aims to create up to 100,000 jobs in 2018.

Related to the tough job market, other officials warned that employment numbers for the winter months are not likely to rebound based on records in the past five years.

The government, announced that it plans to provide internship opportunities at public companies to about 5,000 young job seekers by December though they are temporary jobs that last one to five months, government officials said.

In other measures, the government is also looking into a move to offer jobs for middle-aged people who retired early and are seeking to find work, as well as for elderly people who want to work for financial reasons, he said.

To encourage big companies, such as samsung Electronics Co., SK hynix Inc. and Hyundai Motor Co., to make investments that often lead to job creation, the government is considering easing regulations and offering tax benefits, he said.

In the July-September period, the country's jobless rate stood at 3.8 percent, up 0.4 percentage point from a year earlier. And the employment numbers fell 0.3 percentage point to 61.1 percent during the same period.