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S. Korea's short-hour workers increase to 1 mln last year
SEOUL, Feb. 23 (Yonhap) -- The number of South Korean workers working two to three hours a day edged up to nearly 1 million last year, a government report showed Tuesday, illustrating the worsened state of the country's job market.
According to the report by Statistics Korea, the number of workers working one to 17 hours a week in 2009 was tallied at 963,000. In terms of a five-day work week, the figure was equivalent to three and half hours a day at the longest.
The percentage of short-hour workers out of the total employed population stood at 4.1 percent last year, rising 0.5 percent from 2008, according to the statistics.
The rate marks the highest level since the 1997 economic crisis, when the rate was 1.6 percent.
The number of employed people working 18-26 hours a week came to 1.13 million last year, nearly double the 558,000 such workers in 1997.
Long-hour laborers, working 54 hours a week, accounted for 28.7 percent of the total workers last year, showing a continued downward trend since the 42.1 percent reported in 2001.
Some market analysts attributed the trend of increased short-hour workers and decreased long-hour workers to an increase in the number of temporary and day jobs, but others described it as the diversification of labor types.
"The recent tendency to avoid overtime work and an increase in voluntary part-time workers has also contributed to the trend," said Sohn Min-joong, a researcher at Samsung Economic Research Institute.
kimnh@yna.co.kr
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