Women and seniors took up the largest portion of newly employed persons last year, statistics showed Sunday.

Of the 337,000 newly employed in 2015, women accounted for 205,000, compared to 132,000 men, according to employment data released by Statistics Korea. This is the third consecutive year where more women joined the workforce than men.

“Due to delayed marriages and other factors, the employment rate among women, especially the most economically active ones in their mid-30s, has shown a rapid surge,” said researcher Jung Sung-mi in a report released by the Korea Labor Institute.

There were still more working men than women overall, but the gender gap has continued to decline, from a difference of 4,093,000 in 2012 to 4,006,000 last year.

By age, only 68,000 more Koreans in their 20s began working last year, while 149,000 in their 50s and 172,000 in their 60s were found to have started working. The number of those in their 30s and 40s who began working decreased on-year, the data showed.

The largest increase was seen in manual jobs, with 130,000 taking on work like apartment security, delivering goods and cleaning buildings.

A total of 102,000 had unsuccessfully sought jobs for at least six months, the first time the number has exceeded 100,000 since 2006. They took up 10.5 percent of the entire unemployed population.

Those working in the professional sector, on the other hand, decreased by 44,000.

There were also 141,000 more people who did not give any specific reason for not working, with the total number reaching 1.59 million.

The overall employment rate reached 60.3 percent, the third year that it has failed to reach the 70 percent goal set by the government.

khnews@heraldcorp.com