Manufacturing index rises 6.2% year-on-year to 130.3 in Q2; services sector reaches only 108.5
Strong semiconductor exports have significantly boosted labor productivity in South Korea's manufacturing sector, new data shows.
According to the Korea Productivity Center (KPC), the manufacturing labor productivity index rose 6.2 percent year-on-year in the second quarter to 130.3. The services sector index climbed 0.5 percent to 108.5.
The labor productivity index measures the ratio of output — value added and industrial production — to labor input, with 100 as the baseline.
In manufacturing, value added grew 6.7 percent while labor input increased 0.5 percent. The faster rise in value added pushed the index well above the year-earlier reading of 122.7. The KPC attributed the gains largely to surging semiconductor exports, which offset external headwinds including instability in the Middle East and US tariff measures. The semiconductor export growth rate soared to 181.7 percent this year from 16.3 percent a year earlier.
In the services sector, value added expanded 3.6 percent and labor input grew 3.0 percent, resulting in a modest 0.5 percent productivity gain to 108.5. The improvement was limited compared with manufacturing, as the gap between value-added and labor-input growth was far narrower.
KPC Chairman Park Seong-jung said manufacturing productivity had improved markedly while gains in the services sector remained limited. "We must sustain the growth momentum in manufacturing while pushing the services sector to innovate its working practices and move up the value chain, so that productivity rises across the economy as a whole," he said.
freiheit@heraldcorp.com
