Gov't hiring more low-paid workers; private sector fewer: Data

The government has made job creation its top priority, but the jobs it's creating are not well paid.Plus, many of them are low-skilled and temporary.Our Choi Si-young reports. Data from Statistics Korea show that this year only the public sector has had a net increase in what are considered low-paid jobs... where workers earn less than 18-hundred U.S. dollars a month.And the increase was the biggest since that figure was first compiled five years ago.In the first half of the year, the total number of these low-income workers in the public sector was about 400-thousand,... up nearly fifty-thousand from a year earlier. Other industries including the manufacturing, construction, retail and lodging sectors all saw a decline in low-paid jobs.For example, this year, the manufacturing industry... which hired the largest number of new employees... saw a nearly 230-thousand on-year decrease in jobs that are low-paid.Meanwhile, the number of workers earning more than the 18-hundred dollar threshold increased in both the public and private sectors. Overall, the sudden increase in low-paid jobs in the public sector helped keep the job market from deteriorating further.But many of those new jobs are low-skilled and temporary, fueling criticism that the government isn't considering "quality" of the jobs it creates. Just two weeks ago, the government promised to create nearly 60-thousand jobs in the public sector alone within this year. Aside from questioning the plan's feasibility, worries persist among some experts about the quality and sustainability of such work.Choi Si-young, Arirang News.