(Image: Yonhap News)
Vice Finance Minister Kim Yong-beom says the government will increase hiring in the public sector this year for those hit hardest by the job market crisis brought on by the pandemic.
Kim said Friday during an economic meeting that the plan is to hire more than 800,000 people in positions that are created with fiscal spending in the first quarter.
He said the aim is to "help younger people who have been frustrated with job seeking," adding that the country will also seek to increase the number of state-backed openings by 10 percent to over 1 million to support the underprivileged.
Amid the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak, the number of employed people in South Korea declined for the ninth straight month in November 2020, marking the longest streak of job losses since the Asian financial crisis.
But the ministry said the employment figure is expected to grow by 150,000 this year, which would be a turnaround from last year's estimated job loss of 220,000.
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