The Korean National Statistical said that the nations’s youth labour market remains sluggish even though the overall unemployment rate is decreasing. The unemployment rate among youths aged 15 to 29 came in at 7 percent in September, down 0.3 percentage point from a month earlier. The overall employment rate also dropped 1 percentage point to 41.6 percent from the previous month.

Experts, however, claim that these figures fail to reflect the employment status of most youth, since many of those who are seeking jobs are classified as economically inactive, and are thus not included in the category of being unemployed.The unemployment rate represents the number of unemployed people as a percentage of the economically active population. The employment rate represents the number of employed people as a percentage of the total population.