[Editorial] Job Opportunities Turned Into a Play of Numbers

The number of full time job opportunities, which should be in a constant and gradual increase, decreased by 30,000 last year. The government has played a significant role in this. They used glaring words such as “Good Country to Corporate in, Friendly Country to Invest in.” The acute example of their failed economic policy lies right there in their words without proper labor union-management relationship policies and lifting of regulations.

In the midst of the seriousness of the problem, ministries and offices are advertising their plans to create tens of thousands of job offers each, as if they are competing in this chaotic race of creation. The newly created jobs – supposedly by those ministries and offices – along with the existing ones will number 550,000. If their words are realized, this will literally create full employment in the country. However, we still remember President Roh’s pledge of creating 500,000 jobs during his campaign, and we also remember that we have experienced a drastic decrease in jobs last year against his public pledge. The economy’s growth halted at 2.9 percent when the government aimed for the 7 percent level. What lesson do we learn from this?

Stop playing with numbers in vain and give life to the companies that are the central job-creating bodies. Also provide a variety of concrete policies to stimulate investment directly or indirectly, and put them into full exertion. Creating tens of thousands of temporary “part-time” jobs in the public sector with money from public funds made of people’s taxes will not work out the unemployment issue in the country, as everybody knows. The fantasy created over the futile number-making game will mislead people in the seriousness of the unemployment problem and distance them from the fundamental solution to that problem.

Let me reiterate that policy-making efforts and cooperation from labor unions should precede the gradual plan to create job opportunities. We do not want to hear from corporations saying, “We are afraid of recruiting people, and further of making investments.” The cruel reality is that the national corporations as well the foreign ones do not project the investment environment to be better in the new year. The government should do their best to change this first.