Self-employed workers unhappy with extended Lunar New Year holiday

Self Employed Workers Unhappy With Extended Lunar New Year Holiday

 A street lined with restaurants in downtown Seoul is virtiaully empty last Christmas. Yonhap

A avenue lined with eating places in downtown Seoul is virtiaully empty final Christmas. Yonhap

By Yi Whan-woo

Self-employed staff will not be joyful after the federal government’s designation of Jan. 27 as a brief vacation final week to spice up shopper spending on the event of the Lunar New Yr.

Many salaried staff are anticipated to get pleasure from six days off in a row, as Jan. 27 comes between the weekend and the Lunar New Yr vacation, which is scheduled for Jan. 28 to 30.

Employees may even get 9 days in a row off in the event that they take Jan. 31 off, as it’s adopted by one other weekend.

The federal government expressed hope that the prolonged vacation will assist increase the home financial system amid sluggish non-public spending, as individuals head again to their hometowns for ancestral rituals and to spend time with their households.

Nevertheless, a number of surveys recommend that many individuals plan to journey overseas in the course of the lengthy vacation, elevating doubts concerning the effectiveness of the federal government’s plan to stimulate home demand.

“The Lunar New Yr vacation is often when now we have extra guests and gross sales, however it’s good for nothing when the vacation lasts too lengthy,” stated a snack vendor at a standard market in central Seoul. “Based mostly on my expertise, individuals go overseas when the vacation is stretched to 6 days or longer and the market stays nearly empty.”

Based on Kyowon Tour, a Seoul-based journey company, the variety of outbound journey reservations for the week of the Lunar New Yr vacation jumped by 43.1 % after Jan. 27 was designated as a brief vacation.

Statistics Korea knowledge already confirmed {that a} short-term vacation that comes between a weekend and an official vacation doesn’t essentially lead to larger shopper spending.

As an example, retail gross sales ticked down by 0.4 % in October 2024 from the earlier month, when Armed Forces Day on Oct. 1 was designated as a vacation.

A separate discovering from Journey.com, an internet journey company, indicated that abroad journey shot up 63 % in the identical month.

“The info exhibits a protracted vacation works in opposition to the sake of the self-employed, and that the federal government must be cautious concerning the timing of a brief vacation,” stated Kim Jung-sik, an honorary professor of economics at Yonsei College.

The self-employed have been going through an rising monetary burden as non-public spending declines.

Based on the Korean Statistical Data Service (KOSIS), an internet site run by Statistics Korea, the index for retail gross sales fell 2.1 % within the first 11 months of 2024 from a yr earlier.

The lower was the steepest because the similar interval in 2003, when it slid 3.1 %.

Specifically, the gross sales of all sturdy, semi-durable and non-durable items fell for the second straight yr. This fall was unprecedented even in the course of the Asian monetary disaster within the late Nineteen Nineties and the worldwide monetary disaster within the late 2000s.

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