Finance Minister Yoo Il-ho said Thursday that he believes it will be difficult for the government to achieve the goal of raising the nation’s employment rate to 70 percent.
 
Yoo, who concurrently serves as deputy prime minister, made the remark during a lecture in Incheon.
 
He said though the Park Geun-hye government has continuously increased the employment rate after having set the 70 percent goal as a key policy aim, the government is unlikely to achieve the target.
 
Earlier in June 2013, the government unveiled its road map to raise the employment rate to 70 percent by 2017, the last year of Park’s term.
 
Last year’s rate, however, stood at 60-point-three percent, lower than the target of 66-point-nine percent.
 
Yoo stressed the need to devise long-term measures for jobs that would disappear with the fourth industrial revolution and provide occupational training and placement assistance to workers who are working in positions that would witness a drop in demand in two or three years.
 
Yoo said in order to realize such efforts, the labor market’s flexibility must be secured and stressed that five pending bills on labor reform must, by all means, be passed at the 20th National Assembly.