Ministry of Employment and Labor of Republic o : MOEL officials attend OECD Employment and Labour Ministerial Meeting in France on Jan. 15

Jan. 14, 2016

The OECD Employment and Labour Ministerial Meeting will take place in Paris, France on January 15th (Fri.), 2016, seven years after the last such meeting in 2009. The meeting will be attended by delegates from the 34 OECD member countries and invited countries and officers of international organizations, such as the ILO.
The Employment and Labor Ministers of the 34 OECD member countries will make remarks on and discuss issues on the agenda which include promoting greater labor market resilience and inclusiveness, enhancing the quality of working lives and work-related well-being, reducing inequalities in the labor market and vocational skills policy for inclusive labor markets. They will also share opinions on the direction of the new OECD Jobs Strategy due to be adopted in 2018.
Lee Jae-heung, MOEL's Deputy Minister for Employment Policy, on behalf of Minister Lee Ki-kweon, will participate in the ministerial meeting on January 15th (Fri.) at 9:30 a.m (local time) and talk about Korea's prompt economic crisis response system and specialized employment support programs for different target groups.
Although labor market conditions in member countries are improving after the global economic crisis, more than 41 million people are still without work across the OECD, almost 9 million more than just before the crisis. In particular, more than one in three of all unemployed people have been out of work for a year or more and one in every six young people are neither in employment, education nor training (NEETs) in the OECD. Thus effective support measures are desperately needed to integrate these vulnerable groups into the labor market.

At the meeting, the Ministers, aware of these problems, will adopt a joint statement on promoting greater labor market resilience and inclusiveness to minimize the social costs of unemployment during an economic crisis and get more people into quality jobs. Among other things, the statement puts emphasis on increasing vocational skills development opportunities, strengthening the link between vocational training and quality jobs and expanding effective employment services for vulnerable groups.

Korea will express support for related OECD-level efforts and make clear that it would contribute to realizing such visions through labor market reform and target group-specific employment support programs.
In particular, the Korean government will explain its efforts to improve the employability of youth through the field-oriented work-study dual system and to increase the labor market participation of women and older people by supporting work-family balance and the extension of the retirement age.

Meanwhile, a policy forum involving social partners, such as experts and officers of international organizations, was held under the theme of 'The Future of Work' on January 14th (Thu.) to discuss such issues as digitisation and the future of work and the labor market impacts of the future of work.