Elderly People Now Take Most Part-Time Jobs Under 15 Hours

Record numbers of Koreans work part-time for less than 15 hours a week, and a majority are now over 60.

According to Statistics Korea on Sunday, part-time workers on less than 15 hours increased by 65,000 last year to a record 1.57 million. Their number has been rising since 2013 and they now account for 5.6 percent of all employed people.

People over 60 made up more than half or 50.9 percent, followed by those under 30 (21.9 percent), in their 50s (11.7 percent), 40s (9.2 percent) and 30s (6.3 percent).

Elderly part-time workers took almost all of the increase with 62,000, while those between 15 and 29 increased by 17,000. Among other age groups the number declined by a few thousand.

The growth of part-time work among the elderly is largely due to the government creating artificial menial jobs for them paid for with taxpayers' money.

Park Yoon-soo at Sookmyung Women's University said, "Employers now prefer to hire part-time workers, and university students and others also favor them."