the kovid 19 pandemic has changed the way we work millions upon millions of people have been working
from home and face-to-face service jobs have in some cases disappeared altogether to be replaced
by automation and other forms of technology it's looking more and more likely that some of these
changes to the job market will be permanent and so that means uncertainty in a lot of people's
futures today we have our palanji here in the studio to tell us more about how the pandemic
has affected the labor market in south korea lindjie good to have you back good afternoon well
as i was just saying uh you know there have been a lot of changes in the labor market some of them
could be permanent like maybe more automation and less in-person customer service tell us about
that um that's right like you just said a lot of small businesses are now turning to automation
because not only does it reduce risk in the pandemic but it also saves them money here
we're talking about people who run coffee shops small restaurants and so on who are
considered to be self-employed if an employee tests positive for coven 19 a business might be
disruptive for a few days or even close down for a short period period of time but the benefit of
machines and robots is that they can't be infected the latest data from statistics korea clearly
shows that small businesses are hiring fewer people just last month the number of self-employed
people who were not employing others was up by 112 000 compared to the same month the year before
this figure has been rising for 29 months in a row so of all the self-employed people in the country
only 23 percent have employees and this is the lowest figure since 1999
so with technology employers see a way to reduce risk also to save money but there's also a segment
of customers who actually like the non-contact forms of service like in a coffee shop where
you can go and order from a machine and we also see the rise of some kinds of convenience stores
that don't actually have any staff in them that's something that the pandemic may have accelerated
that's right some convenience stores in korea are going unmanned at least at night
they have staff during the day but from 11pm to 6am customers serve themselves you go into
the store at night by simply inserting your credit card into the car reader at the door
and you use the self-checkout when you leave the convenience store chain emar 24 says out of about
5 500 of its franchise stores across the country around 150 stores are operated in this way
even though there are manned the stores also sell alcoholic beverages this beer fridge has a
qr scanner to verify your age using your driver's license and then you put your credit card into the
machine to open the door but the coolest thing is that to pay you don't have to scan your beer
a camera sees which product you've chosen and charges them to your cart when you close the door
we have decided to use this vending machine to provide convenience to customers and to run our
stores more efficiently the company also said it plans to expand the use of this machine to
sell products other than alcohol this could pave the way for retailers to launch fully unmanned
convenience stores running 24 7. so angie from what you're saying and that does sound
very interesting uh you know automation is speeding up a lot of innovation but
that might not be good for the job market at least in the short term tell us about the
situation in that regard and what the government might be able to do about it um well devin since
the pandemic hit the country has seen a high rate of long-term unemployment last month the
number of people who have spent more than four months looking for a job amounted to 357 000
compared to before the pandemic in february 2020 this is an increase of 26.4 percent
but even worse in june the number of people who were able to work but had given up and left the
labor force altogether instead of 583 thousand that's an increase from a year earlier of 46 000.
the figure has been recording an all-time high for 16 months in a row now an economist from the
bank of korea says it's really important to have these people engaged in the workforce as soon as
possible and he expressed hope that automation can actually create new jobs so the government
should help workers who are at a high risk of being replaced to find jobs related to this field
for instance with more self-ordering kiosks the manufacturers will need to hire more people
people who lost their job can maybe get a job there or if not get other
jobs that have been newly created through this kind of automation
so the government needs to help out these people move on to a new job
so angie it sounds like people who have lost their jobs because of automation or issues in
the pandemic should think about acquiring new skills that could transfer into perhaps even an
entirely different industry what other changes are we seeing in the labor market well another
issue in the labor market is that large businesses have started hiring again but smaller ones have
not been able to this shows how the pandemic has widened this gap between large companies and small
companies in korea large businesses are defined as those with more than 300 employees a report by
the country's central bank shows that employment at large businesses increased by 6.4 percent last
month compared to before the pandemic meanwhile the workforce as smaller businesses shrank by 0.8
big companies getting bigger creates higher barriers to entry for small businesses this will
have a negative impact on businesses hiring new people he said the government should find ways to
help smes hire more people already in the pandemic we've seen for example bigger relief payments
going to companies that keep their employees there are also new opportunities opening up for training
well angie you've described some things that are very interesting and exciting
in terms of innovation also some things that we all want to be aware of when it comes to
employment and the labor market very thorough reporting today angie thank you for that thank you