[Graphic News] Korea suffers age disparity in unemployment

South Korea has relatively low unemployment, but its young workers have the biggest comparative disadvantage to their middle-aged peers of any country in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a report showed Monday.

In its report on youth employment, the Bank of Korea said the nation’s youth (aged 15-29) unemployment rate reached 8.0 percent in 2013.

This figure was lower than in major European economies. The youth unemployment rate was 42.4 percent in Spain, 29.6 percent in Italy and 18.4 percent in France. The OECD average was 13.4 percent.

But Korea’s youth joblessness was 3.7 times higher than its middle aged unemployment, the highest ratio of any OECD country, according to the report.

Seoul officials analyzed that the main reason for this was that the nation has failed to create many regular jobs.