Economically Active Population Survey.
National Bureau of Statistics, Economic Planning Board.
Excluded are members of the armed forces, the institutional population, non-residents citizens, foreigners and persons residing abroad.
The survey is monthly.
The week containing the 15th of the month.
The survey provides information on employment, unemployment, underemployment, hours of work, duration of unemployment, discouraged workers, industry, occupation, status in employment, and level of education.
Also included are:
Persons with a job but temporarily absent without leave and unpaid family workers temporarily absent from work, both certain of returning to work within less than one month, are also considered as employed.
Excluded from the employed and considered as out of the labour force are persons engaged in own housework and persons doing unpaid community or social work.
Since military duty in Korea is compulsory, members of the armed forces are excluded from the survey.
There is no "lay-off" system in Korean firms. Those persons who are laid off are actually classified as employed, unemployed or inactive according to whether or not they fulfil the criteria of the employment/unemployment definitions.
Also included are full- and part-time students seeking full- or part-time work; participants in employment promotion schemes; and unpaid apprentices and trainees.
"Actively looking for work" means having taken one or more of the following steps during the reference week: registered at an employment agency; placed or answered advertisements; applied for an employment examination; contacted friends or relatives; checked at worksites; made arrangements to establish own business; etc.
"Availability for work" is based on the willingness of the person surveyed to take up a job immediately if reasonable work is available.
Seasonal workers awaiting agricultural or other seasonal work are excluded from the unemployed and considered as out of the labour force. Also excluded are persons without work, available for work, but not seeking work during the reference week because they are unable to find any work or lack the necessary qualifications, etc.
Employed persons and unemployed persons with previous work experience are classified by industry, occupation and status in employment. All persons covered by the survey are classified by educational attainment.
Selection of PSUs: PSUs were classified into 15 strata according to their major administrative districts, while the PSUs in each province were further classified into two strata: urban and rural. A total of 961 sample PSUs with a different number of sample PSUs in each stratum were selected. In each stratum, the sample PSUs were systematically selected with a probability proportional to its size, that is the number of households in the census results.
Selection of USUs: In each PSU, one ED was selected with a probability proportional to its size, and the selected ED was divided into a number of segments, depending upon its size. Three contiguous segments were selected in the urban sample EDs and four in the rural sample EDs. The self-weighting method was adopted for each stratum, with the sampling fractions varying from stratum to stratum. As a result, a total of 31,000 households based on the 1985 Population Census count were included in the samples, with an overall sampling fraction of about 1/306. The average number of households in the 1988 monthly survey was about 32,500.
Comprehensive instructions are given once a year to all enumerators. During training, enumerators discuss various problems such as classification of industries and occupations, interviewing techniques and reduction of response errors, etc.
At the data processing stage, the survey results are cross-checked by editors.
Sample data are expanded to national estimates using the ratio estimate method. Then the primary data collected from the sample survey are expanded by sex and region.
| Total | Males | Females | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Employment (size of est.) | 17,225,000 | 10,274,000 | 6,951,000 |
| Standard error | 36,000 | 21,000 | 27,000 |
| Unemployment (size of est.) | 417,000 | 300,000 | 118,000 |
| Standard error | 7,000 | 5,000 | 4,000 |
The X11-ARIMA method has been adopted for seasonally adjusting the unemployment rate.
Not available.
From 1957 to 1962, statistics on the labour force were collected through the local administrative network under the responsibility of the Ministry of Home Affairs. In 1963, the responsibility for the survey was transferred to the National Bureau of Statistics, Economic Planning Board, while the name of the survey was changed from the Labour Force Survey to the Economically Active Population Survey. Since then, the survey has been conducted quarterly with the adoption of the labour force approach contained in the international recommendations.
The periodicity was changed from quarterly to monthly in July 1982.
In June 1983, the questionnaire was revised to introduce several new questions in order to capture underemployment and underutilisation of manpower.
In January 1987, the lower age limit of the survey was raised from 14 to 15 years and the seasonal adjustment of the unemployment rate was introduced.
In July 1988, the sample size of the survey, which used to be of 17,500 households, was expanded to 32,500 households, which contributed to greater data accuracy and made regional data available.
Economic Planning Board, National Bureau of Statistics: "Monthly Statistics of Korea" (Seoul); this report is usually released two months after the survey week.
idem: "Annual Report on the Economically Active Population Survey" (ibid.); this publication is released five months after the end of the previous year (in May).
In addition, non-published results are available upon request, and tabulations can be made available in machine readable form.