[EDITORIALS]Private sector jobs are needed

Government proposals to create more jobs for young people make a poor showing. Government ministries are competitively presenting plans for jobs for youth, but their effects are dubious. Since some of them lack substance, people wonder whether they were presented with an eye toward the April elections.
The deputy prime minister of economy and finance, Kim Jin-pyo, pledged to create 80,000 more jobs in the public sector this year. Chin Dae-je, minister of information and communication, announced a plan to create 300,000 jobs in the information technology sector by 2007. The government has earmarked over 500 billion won ($425 million) for job creation for youth in this year’s budget.
Unemployment among the young is so serious that a new word, itaebaek, meaning “most young people in their 20s are jobless,” has been coined. It is right for the government to come forward with active plans. According to a poll, young people between the ages of 15 and 29 make up almost half of the unemployed. Graduation from schools means going jobless, and one out of five university graduates lacks work. It seems unavoidable to adopt some measure of providing government subsidies to the jobless.
But the situation will not improve even if the government repeatedly takes such measures. They will only waste a large amount of tax money. Over 190,000 jobs for youth have been lost in the last year. And more than half of them are temporary or day jobs. Job creation without vision and an improvement in productivity cannot help the unemployed in the long run. It will only mass produce temporary workers, worsening the quality of employment and creating instability in the labor market.
Government measures for creating jobs for youth must be changed. Enumerating plans from different ministries is no longer acceptable. More comprehensive and elaborate plans must be drawn. Providing subsidies in a stopgap manner will only increase the tax burden on people’s shoulders.
The fundamental solution lies in the recovery of the private sector, particularly the industrial sector. Jobs created by industrialists are real jobs. The government must refrain from making remarks and taking actions that can hurt businessmen’s will to do business.