South Korea’s jobless rate rose in December from a month earlier, but more jobs were created, with the labor market still grim for youths, a government report showed Wednesday.

According to the report by Statistics Korea, the jobless rate stood at 3.4 percent last month, up from 3.1 percent in November.

The seasonally adjusted jobless rate also inched up from 3.4 percent to 3.5 percent.

Job creation remained strong. The number of employed people reached 25.38 million last month, up 422,000 from a year earlier, the report showed.

The figure slowed slightly from the 438,000 increase tallied in November but represented the fourth straight month that it topped the 400,000 mark, the report said.

For the whole of 2014, the country’s jobless rate hit 3.5 percent, a 0.4 percentage point gain from the year before. There were 25.59 million people employed in 2014, up 533,000 from the previous year. The increase is the largest reported since 2002. (Yonhap)