[연합시론] Employment shock due to prolonged coronavirus… Long and short-term overcoming measures must be fully mobilized

(Seoul = Yonhap News) The employment report card for the first month of the new year was so terrible that the word’shock’ was insufficient. According to the employment trend released by the National Statistical Office on the 10th, the number of employed last month was 2,5818,000, down 982,000 from the same month last year. This is the largest decline in 23 years since the decrease of 1283,000 people in December 1998, during the aftermath of the financial crisis. The number of employed people and the employment rate of all age groups fell, and the employment rate for those aged 15 to 64 was 64.3%, down 2.4 percentage points from last year. The number of unemployed people was 1.57 million, an increase of 417,000 from last year, the highest since June 1999 when the unemployment statistics were reorganized. The unemployment rate was also 5.7%, an increase of 1.8 percentage points from a year ago, and was the highest in 20 years as of January.

A closer look reveals that the prolonged COVID-19 outbreak is hitting almost every aspect of employment. Employed persons in industries hit by distance business restrictions such as lodging and restaurant business (-367,000 people), wholesale and retail business (-218,000 people), associations and organizations, repair and other personal service businesses (-103,000 people) The number has decreased particularly significantly. The number of employed workers in the transportation and warehousing business (30,000 people), business facility management, business support and rental service businesses (27,000 people), which benefited from non-face-to-face sales and service activation, showed an increase. By job status, temporary workers (-563,000 people), daily workers (-232,000 people), self-employed people with employees (-158,000 people), and so on, have drastically decreased. Reaffirm that there is.

Employment has been deteriorating since the Corona 19 crisis, but the reason the situation was not particularly good last month is due to the overlapping of several negative factors. The biggest factor is that face-to-face service companies such as lodging, restaurants, wholesale and retail companies faced a frost on December 8 last year, as the distance between the two was upgraded to the 2.5 stage in the metropolitan area and the second stage in other regions. In addition, the decrease in the number of new recruits for young people, the time lag between the end of jobs for the elderly and the start of jobs for the elderly, and the decrease in daily jobs due to heavy snow also contributed to the deteriorating employment situation. An official at the National Statistical Office explained that the increase in the number of employed by 568,000 in January last year also produced a’base effect’ that made the employment situation even worse last month. The problem is that it is difficult to see that the job situation will improve significantly in the short term. With 300 to 400 new confirmed cases still appearing every day, it is not easy to loosen the restrictions on distancing largely if it is a fine adjustment of the operating restrictions. No matter how optimistic you look, it is expected that the employment cold, centered on the face-to-face service industry, will continue until November, when the government set the goal of forming group immunity.

There is bound to be a limit for self-employed people and small business owners to confront such a fierce wave, so the government must play an active role in order to somehow overcome this hurdle. The government held a meeting of related ministers presided over by Deputy Prime Minister Hong Nam-ki, and during the first quarter, the central government and local governments cooperated to create ‘900,000+ alpha (α)’ jobs and speed up job measures tailored to youth and women. It said it would take all possible policy measures to respond to worsening employment. It is a natural direction setting, but it is most important to cover your priorities well. Finding the quickest and most efficient way to support those who have lost their jobs and face a livelihood crisis will be a priority. Along with direct support in the form of disaster subsidies, short-term countermeasures should be hurried, such as resuming public job programs temporarily suspended at the beginning of the year and strengthening employment support for self-employed and small and medium-sized business people. If necessary, early planning of additional budgets should be actively reviewed. Of course, it is not possible to postpone the mid- to long-term tasks that need to be studied and discussed with a long breath, such as reorganization of the industrial structure to cope with the changes of the times, incentives to promote employment of companies, and improvement of regulations. As the aftermath of the Corona 19 incident is all-round, the strategy to cope with it must be a full-scale response.

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2021/02/10 sent 11:07