According to a lawmaker, the employment rate of full-time employees working 40 hours a week has remained in the 50 percent range for the past two years, raising concerns about a deteriorating labor market in the midst of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which has been ongoing for several months.

According to Rep. Yoo Gyeong-Joon of the main opposition People Power Party, citing his own analysis of Statistics Korea's research on the economically active population, the "full-time equivalent" employment rate for 2021 was 58.8 percent, nearly unchanged from the 58.6 percent estimated a year earlier.

It was the first time since 1981 that the figure had fallen below 50 percent of the population. Even during the height of the global financial crisis in 2010, the full-time equivalent employment rate remained at 60 percent.

FTE employment rate is an economic indicator used by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to measure the number of full-time workers. It is calculated by counting a worker who works 40 hours per week as one employee for the purpose of measuring the number of full-time workers. A person who works 20 hours per week is therefore considered to be 0.5 of an employee, whereas those who work 60 hours per week are considered to be 1.5.

Yoo attributed the slow growth in the number of full-time employees to an increase in the number of temporary jobs created by the government, according to the report.

According to Yoo, "the Moon Jae-in administration's employment projects, which focused on creating temporary jobs in the public sector through state-led programs, primarily for the elderly, neglected efforts to create quality jobs in the broader job market."