President Moon’s Job Policies Reportedly Behind Rise in Unemployment in South Korea

Very rarely have I seen President Moon be criticized in the media, but it looks like he is finally facing some heat for his domestic job policies:

South Korea has been trapped in a paradox of employment.

Domestically, the more effort the government makes, the more difficult it is for young people to find decent jobs.

In other words, President Moon Jae-in’s job policies are limiting the creation of new, quality jobs in the private sector.

Last year, Moon implemented a supplementary budget of 11.2 trillion won ($10.5 billion) to create jobs and formulated another extra budget plan of 3.9 trillion won early this month. However, the job market situation has taken a turn for the worse.

The jobless rate reached 4.5 percent in March, the highest level in 17 years. The number of jobs created came to 112,000 from the same month a year ago, sharply down from January’s 334,000.

Internationally, Korea is isolated in its job market recovery.

Many big economies, including the U.S. and Japan, are showing handsome figures in employment, while Korea’s labor market has stayed in the doldrums.

The jobless rate for the U.S. stood at 4.1 percent in March, the lowest level in 17 years. Japan’s unemployment rate was at 2.5 percent in the same month, similar to 2.4 percent in February, the lowest in nearly 25 years.

The employment fiasco for Asia’s fourth-largest economy is the outcome of a toxic mixture of three forces ― Moon’s contradictory policies, market uncertainties and technology.

First, a surge in the unemployment rate is paradoxically associated with Moon’s job policies.

The Moon administration has been trying to take the initiative in job creation rather than encouraging the private sector to hire new employees.

Moon has focused on creating jobs in the public sector by hiring more civil servants and turning irregular workers into regular ones.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but I never did see how adding a bunch of government jobs without a justification for them would help the economy?