Finance, labor ministries to guide public sector on job creation

The Ministry of Strategy and Finance and the Ministry of Employment and Labor are in the process of reviewing and redrafting their public sector employment road map to come up with new ways to assess the job market, government officials said.

This comes as the government seeks greater accuracy in projections for job creation at public agencies, institutions and companies as it sets out to achieve an employment rate of 70 percent over the next four years.

Job creation, along with the development of a creative economy, has been one of President Park Geun-hye’s key policy initiatives. Last June, the government announced plans to create some 2.38 million jobs between now and 2017.

The two ministries plan to draw up guidelines for the public sector on how to calculate their needs for human capital, officials said.

The guidelines would include reorganizing and regrouping some government agencies’ businesses such as research and development under a single category.

For instance, the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Ministry of Health and Welfare unveiled their own separate R&D business and investment plans for job creation over the next four years.

Such plans are expected to be reorganized under a single state R&D business for transparent assessment and evaluation.

They will be further re-categorized as R&D for logistics, social services and information technology.

Related economic ministers plan to meet to discuss ways to draw up such guidelines for better employment assessment this week.

About 30 state-run enterprises created 1,400 jobs in the first half of this year, and plan to hire 2,500 employees in the second half of this year, the Finance Ministry said in a statement.

Although public companies have not yet decided on their plans for next year, the government expects the number of jobs to further increase in 2014 as the public sector seeks to lead job creation.

Some 2.38 million jobs would be created through policies promoting flexible hiring, reduced working hours and job sharing especially for the young, women and the elderly. Tax incentives will also be offered to companies that boost their human resources.

The 70 percent employment road map involves 14 ministries and agencies and is part of the president’s policy drive to boost welfare, growth and market fairness.

By Park Hyong-ki (hkp@heraldcorp.com)