Job creators are patriots. So said President Lee Myung-bak during a meeting with a group of businessmen a few days ago. The terse remark sums up the bleak labor market outlook for next year.

Jobs are likely to be much more difficult to find in 2012 as domestic companies plan to scale back new hiring in response to slowing economic growth at home and abroad.

The Bank of Korea puts the number of new jobs to be created next year at 280,000, a 30 percent plunge from the average 407,000 jobs created in the months up to October this year. It is also smaller than the 323,000 jobs added in 2010.

Yet the central bank’s projection is higher than those offered by domestic private research institutes. For instance, the Samsung Economic Research Institute suggested 240,000, while the Daishin Economic Research Institute offered 260,000. The LG Economic Research Institute put it in the upper 200,000 range.

The grim labor market outlook is mainly attributable to the persistent debt crisis in the eurozone, which is expected to continue to plague the global economy next year, thereby hurting Korea’s exports.

The turmoil in Europe has already begun to bite. The BOK said the nation’s exports could shrink in terms of volume in the fourth quarter of this year and the first quarter of next year. For the whole of next year, exports are forecast to grow a mere 5 percent, down from an estimated 11.6 percent expansion this year.

As exports account for about half of the Korean economy, a deceleration in export growth is bound to weaken the growth momentum of the national economy. Hence the central bank slashed its growth estimate for the Korean economy in 2012 from 4.6 percent to 3.7 percent.

In the face of a worsening business environment at home and abroad, companies are planning to cut back investment and recruitment. The manufacturing industry has already begun to shed jobs. In October, the number of manufacturing jobs plunged by 55,000.

Yet the service sector is expected to remain resilient. In October, it added as many as 548,000 new jobs. Employment growth will continue in such areas as health care, welfare services, and research and development, which are not sensitive to economic fluctuations.

As private-sector job growth is projected to be sluggish, the government needs to take up some of the slack. Finance Minister Bahk Jae-wan recently said public agencies would increase next year’s recruitment by 20 percent from this year as part of efforts to ease youth unemployment.

This is a step in the right direction. Job expansion in the public sector is necessary to encourage corresponding efforts in the private sector.

In anticipation of slowing job growth next year, the government increased spending on job creation by 6.8 percent when it drafted the 2012 budget in September. Yet the proposed increase now appears too small in light of the projected precipitous drop in job expansion next year.

Hence the government needs to mobilize all means possible to facilitate job creation. For instance, it needs to expand support for young people to start up their own businesses, as startups create more jobs than established companies. It also needs to encourage private companies to extend their mandatory retirement ages.

Quality jobs are the critical link between welfare improvement and economic growth. Those who contribute to creating or retaining such jobs certainly deserve to be called patriots.