The Bank of Korea said the country's unemployment rate was likely to be higher than official estimates during the COVID-19 epidemic, mainly because the official survey failed to cover people who were willing to work but could not apply for a job.
The Bank of Korea said that if people who left the labor market due to isolation, parenting needs, interview delays and other reasons related to COVID-19 's epidemic were taken into account, the average real unemployment rate from March 2020 to August this year may be 0.29 percentage points higher than officially announced.
After including the affected groups, the unemployment rate of 2.8%, which hit a record low last month, could actually be as high as 3.7%, according to an analysis released by the Bank of Korea on Monday.
Oh Sam-il, an economist at the Bank of Korea, said in a research report that the biggest gap between the officially reported unemployment rate and the Bank of Korea estimate was women and young workers, indicating that these groups were the hardest hit during the epidemic.