According to the “January 2021 Labor Market Trends, Based on Employment Administration Statistics,” released by the Ministry of Employment and Labor on the 8th, 212,000 people newly applied for job-seeking benefits last month. This is the first time that the number of new applicants for job-seeking benefits exceeded 200,000. On the other hand, the number of employment insurance subscribers to pay the employment insurance fund, which is a source of job-seeking benefits, declined significantly.
Last month, employment insurance subscribers were 13835,000, an increase of only 151,000 compared to the same period last year. This increase is the smallest after the increase of 138,000 people in February 2004. In May of last year, when the first pandemic of Corona 19 unfolded, the number of employment insurance subscribers increased by 155,000 compared to the previous year, and after that, the number of employment insurance subscribers increased by 394,000 from the previous year in November of last year.
The fact that the number of employment insurance subscribers does not increase and the number of beneficiaries of employment insurance increases significantly is likely to lead to exhaustion of the employment insurance fund. In fact, last month’s job-seeking benefit benefit amount increased for two consecutive months following last December, and 9602 billion won was paid. This trend continues until the beginning of this year, after reaching a record high of 11,850.7 billion won in job-seeking benefits over the past year. In particular, this month’s job-seeking benefit is a number that does not reflect the largest number of new applicants ever (212,000), so the amount of job-seeking benefit payments for next month is expected to increase further. Kim Young-jung, head of the employment policy department of the Ministry of Employment and Labor, explained in a briefing held that day, “There is a time lag in the administrative processing of employment insurance.”
Some point out that the government’s direct job contract period, which is called’public alba,’ is ending at the end of last year, which is another burden on the employment insurance fund. Until now, the government’s direct jobs in the public sector have been criticized as causing the illusion of statistics because they are classified as employed in job statistics, even though daily jobs are mainly used. However, even these jobs disappeared when the contract ended at the end of last year, and 28,500 people in the public administration sector applied for job-seeking benefits last month.
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