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CONKLING KOPCIKECONOMICS
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South Korea: Unemployment rate (monthly)

Unemployed people aged 15 and over as a percentage of the labour force, seasonally adjusted, on the ILO definition as harmonised by the OECD.

Data status: Current
Official statisticSource figures as of October 16, 2026Sources & methods
Sources
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
Period covered
Jan 1990 – Aug 2026
Source figures as of
October 16, 2026
Geography
South Korea
Sector
Whole economy (not a single sector)
Seasonal adjustment
Seasonally adjusted
Transformations
Views other than the level (changes, averages, volatility) are calculated by CK Economics from these figures
Revisions
Replaced with the source’s latest figures whenever it revises them.
Data status
Current

Full method · Research standards

Key figures

CK estimate% of labour force · calculated by CK Economics from Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development data

Latest · Aug 2026
2.7
−0.1 pp vs a year earlier1
5-year change
−0.7 pp
since Aug 20212
10-year change
−1.2 pp
since Aug 20162
Record high
8.2
Jul 1998 (and 1 other period)3
Record low
1.9
Dec 1995 (and 2 other periods)3
Where the latest ranks
18th pct.
Higher than 18% of the other 439 observations since Jan 19904
  1. 1Latest observation against the observation one year earlier (for weekly data, the nearest within three days).
  2. 2Latest observation against the observation five and ten years earlier.
  3. 3Highest and lowest published observations across the full history shown.
  4. 4Share of the other published observations that are lower than the latest one, rounded down.

Methodology

Unemployed people aged 15 and over as a percentage of the labour force, seasonally adjusted, on the ILO definition as harmonised by the OECD. National statistics as compiled by the OECD. Read from the OECD's SDMX API, or from its DBnomics mirror when the OECD's API is unavailable; the series' source note says which. Some values are flagged by the source as a break in the series. Source series DSD_LFS@DF_IALFS_UNE_M/KOR.UNE_LF_M.PT_LF_SUB._Z.Y._T.Y_GE15._Z.M. Licence: CC BY 4.0.

How we collect, check and project every dataset →

Source

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, OECD Data Explorer (OECD, retrieved 2026-10-19). https://sdmx.oecd.org/public/rest/data/OECD.SDD.TPS,DSD_LFS@DF_IALFS_UNE_M,/KOR.UNE_LF_M.PT_LF_SUB._Z.Y._T.Y_GE15._Z.M

All data

440 observations, newest first · % of labour force

Downloading means you accept our TermsCSVJSON
PeriodValueChange y/y
Aug 20262.7−0.1 pp
Jul 20262.8+0.1 pp
Jun 20262.70 pp
May 20262.8+0.1 pp
Apr 20262.8+0.1 pp
Mar 20262.7−0.1 pp
Feb 20262.9+0.1 pp
Jan 20263+0.2 pp
Dec 20253.3+0.2 pp
Nov 20252.80 pp
Oct 20252.7−0.1 pp
Sep 20252.7+0.1 pp
Aug 20252.8+0.2 pp
Jul 20252.70 pp
Jun 20252.7−0.1 pp
May 20252.7−0.1 pp
Apr 20252.7−0.1 pp
Mar 20252.80 pp
Feb 20252.8+0.1 pp
Jan 20252.80 pp
Dec 20243.1+0.3 pp
Nov 20242.80 pp
Oct 20242.8+0.2 pp
Sep 20242.6−0.2 pp