Last year, the working conditions of irregular workers showed a slight improvement, as the number of irregular workers decreased and their wage level compared to that of regular workers arose over 50 percent.
An analysis can be made possible that the government policy seeking to convert the irregular jobs in the public sector into permanent positions positively affected the labor market. In the meanwhile, critical views are also raised in that the number of part-time jobs, one of vulnerable forms of employment jumped up which impedes the improvement of working conditions.
The Korean Contingent Workers' Center on Feb. 19 made public an issue paper titled 'Irregular Workers in Statistics' which is an analysis study on the additional survey on economically active population in August 2017 released by Statistics Korea.
According to the report, the number of irregular workers which had shown an upward trend since 2013 drastically decreased. The number of irregular workers decreased to 8,412,000, which is 42.3 percent of the total number of wage workers(19,883,000) as of August last year, 284,000 down compared to the same month of the previous year. In August 2016, the number of irregular workers reached 8,696,000(44.3 percent) of the total of 19,627,000 wage workers.
It is the largest decrease in the additional survey on economically active population since 2001. In the past years, the trend has shown an upward curve. In 2013, the number of irregular workers was 8,328,000; in 2014, 8,495,000; in 2015, 8,625,000; in 2016, 8,696,000.
In terms of the types of employment, the decrease of temporary workers and fixed-term contract workers greatly contributed to the downward trend of the total number of irregular workers. The number of temporary workers fell to 2,246,000 in 2017, 263,000 down from 2,509,000 in 2016(minus 10.5 percent). In the same period, the number of fixed-term contract workers decreased to 1,949,000, 97,000 down from 2,046,000(minus 4.7 percent).
Meanwhile, part-time jobs increased to a great deal. Temporary part-time workers increased by 149,000(8.4 percent) and ordinary part-time workers up by 55,000(39.3 percent) compared to the previous year. "The policy effect of working time selective system that the former Park Geun-hye administration actively promoted still largely affects the labor market and impedes the working condition improvement policy of the Moon Jae-in administration," the Korean Contingent Workers' Center pointed out.
reported by Bae Hye-jung
translated by Kim Sung-jin