South Korea’s jobless rate edged down in August from a month earlier but job creation slowed markedly amid worries the overall economic conditions are toughening at home and abroad, a government report showed Wednesday.

According to the report by Statistics Korea, the jobless rate stood at 3 percent last month, down from 3.1 percent tallied in the previous month. This is the lowest level for this year.

The number of jobs added to payrolls, however, slumped. About 364,000 more jobs were created last month than a year earlier, the slowest growth pace since September last year and quite smaller than July’s figure of 470,000.

“The risk to the labor market is that the number of the economically-inactive population seems to be increasing as many are giving up on finding jobs in the face of toughening employment conditions,” said Jin Eun-jung, an economist at Korea Investment & Securities Co.

“The key is how many jobs the private sector intends to create down the road at a time when businesses remain concerned about bleak market outlooks,” she said.

The number of the “economically inactive” population, who are not counted as jobless, came to 16.04 million in August, up 1.1 percent or 180,000 from a year earlier, according to the report.

In particular, 225,000 of those said they had given up looking for jobs, up 15,000 from a year earlier.

Labor market conditions for young people remain bleak, although their jobless rate dropped from a month earlier. Of those aged 15-29, 6.4 percent were jobless last month, down from July’s 7.3 percent.

The latest employment data comes as South Korea’s economy faces uncertainty because of worries the protracted eurozone debt problems and global slowdown could dampen growth by undercutting exports.

Central bank data showed the country’s gross domestic product grew 0.3 percent during the April-June period. This is less than half of the 0.9 percent on-quarter expansion tallied in the first quarter and the slowest growth since the fourth quarter of last year. 

(Yonhap News)