South Korea's GDP returns to the top 10 in the world! Unemployment rate rises to 21-year high

According to the unemployment statistics recently released by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) , South Korea 's unemployment rate in January was 5.4%, rising to the highest level in 21 years .

South Korea's unemployment rate in January this year rose by 0.9 percentage points from the previous month, the highest level since October 1999. However, it is still lower than the average unemployment rate of 6.8% among OECD member countries .

The average unemployment rate of OECD member countries remained the same as the previous month. Affected by the spread of the new coronavirus, the average unemployment rate rose to 8.8% in April last year, but has gradually improved since then. The U.S. unemployment rate reached 14.8% in April last year, but fell to 6.3% in January this year.

South Korea's unemployment rate ranks 18th among the 27 OECD member countries, which is relatively low. However , in terms of age, the unemployment rate of young people (15 to 24 years old) in South Korea ranks 15th among the 25 member countries, higher than the United States (11.2%) , and the annual salary of newly hired college graduates in South Korea has dropped by more than 2% this year.

In terms of gender , the figure for men was 4.9% and for women was 6.1%, with a gender gap of 1.2 percentage points, far exceeding the OECD average (0.4 percentage points).

At the same time, according to the latest data released by the OECD , South Korea's gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to reach US$1.624 trillion last year , ranking 9th in the world according to forecasts.

Following South Korea are Canada ( $1.62 trillion), Russia ($1.43 trillion), Brazil ($1.394 trillion) and Australia ($1.333 trillion).

Previously, South Korea's economy ranked 10th in the world in 2018 , but fell to 12th in 2019. After a year , South Korea has regained the top ten economic size in the world again, thanks to its active response to the spread of the new coronavirus and effective reduction of economic impact. In fact, South Korea's economic growth rate last year ranked third among the 20 major countries (G20).

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