S. Korea's job growth slows for three months

South Korea's job growth slowed down for three straight months, bolstering concerns that the ferry sinking disaster had a negative effect on employment data, or the lagging indicator which reflects economic conditions with a certain time gap, a government report showed Wednesday.

The number of people employed increased 413,000 from a year earlier to reach 25,811,000 in May, according to Statistics Korea.

After peaking at 835,000 in February, the monthly job growth continued to fall to 649,000 in March, 581,000 in April and 413, 000 in May respectively.

The job increase falling below 500,000 was the first since October 2013, but the May figure was higher than the monthly average expansion of 386,000 tallied in 2013.

Jobless rate rose 0.6 percentage point on year to 3.5 percent in May. The number of people unemployed came to 951,000 in May, up 19.3 percent from a year earlier.