SEOUL, May 11 (Xinhua) -- South Korea added over 400,000 jobs last month, but the unemployment rate jumped above 4 percent, a government report showed Thursday.
The number of those employed totaled 26,577,000 in April, up 424,000 from a year earlier, according to Statistics Korea.
The job growth, which stayed below 300,000 from December to January, rose to 371,000 in February and above 400,000 for two months through April.
Despite the growing number of employment, the jobless rate advanced 0.3 percentage points over the year to 4.2 percent in April. It was the highest among figures tallied in April, except for 4.5 percent recorded in 2000.
The number of those unemployed reached the record high of 1,174,000 in April, up 99,000 from a year earlier.
The higher unemployment rate was attributed to more people who rushed to the labor market for getting a job.
The unemployment rate refers to those who failed to land a job in the past four weeks despite efforts to actively seek a job and were immediately available for work.
