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Earlier this week, the Korean government unveiled its roadmap for raising the employment rate to 70 percent… from the current 64 percent by 2017.
Part of the plan involves dramatically increasing the number of part-time jobs,.. but some critics believe… quantity still can’t trump quality.
Our economics correspondent Kim Han-ul reports on the part-time dilemma. The Finance Ministry and related economic ministries are planning to create around 2-point-4 million jobs in the next four years, and to do that, they want to add more than 900-thousand part-time jobs.
But the problem is that most of these part-time jobs are categorized as low paying, labor-intensive jobs, and the workers who do them tend to be in the lower class and need the extra income, so they’re not going to want to work fewer hours and get less pay.
“Part-time jobs can’t be created without regard to social class, because some people don’t want to work part-time, they want to work full-time to earn enough, and this plan could hurt them.”
Another concern is whether the goal of 70 percent employment is overly ambitious,… especially at a time when the government and the central bank are lowering their economic growth projections for the next few years.
“In a period of low growth, where there is no new investment, it is difficult to create new jobs. If the economic pie remains the same size, with only the number of jobs increasing, then we are jeopardizing productivity and the quality of work. So instead of maintaining the size of the pie as is, we should figure out some ways to increase the pie, to create more jobs.”
Experts say it not just about increasing the numbers, but more about creating quality part-time jobs,… which will be crucial for the success of the new government plan.
Kim Han-ul, Arirang News.
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