SEJONG -- South Korea's jobless rate fell slightly in February due to a rise in employment in the construction and public service sectors, but the number of newly added jobs fell to the lowest level in eight years, government data showed Wednesday.

The unemployment rate stood at 4.6 percent last month, down 0.3 percentage point from a year earlier, according to the report compiled by Statistics Korea.

From a month earlier, it remained unchanged.

The number of employed people reached 26.08 million in February, up 104,000 from a year earlier, sharply slowing down from the previous month's rise of 334,000, according to the report compiled by Statistics Korea.

The addition of new jobs in February marks the lowest since January 2010, the data showed.

The unemployment rate for young people -- those aged between 15 and 29 -- was 9.8 percent, compared with 12.3 percent a year earlier.

The employment rate advanced 0.1 percentage point to 65.8 percent from a year earlier, with the corresponding figure for young people up 1 percentage point at 42.2 percent.

The number of public workers increased by 59,000 last month, while the financial sector saw hiring gains of 56,000 last month, according to the data.

The construction sector added 64,000 last month, while the educational service and retail sectors shed 54,000 and 92,000 workers, respectively.

Last month's lower-than-expected rise in the employment was due to a slump in the manufacturing and agriculture segments, the statistics office said.

The data came as the government will roll out a set of measures to resolve the chronic unemployment problem facing young people.

The government may consider granting an allowance to young jobseekers and creating an extra budget, as well as introducing tax incentives or subsidies for young jobseekers, and it will mobilize all the tools at its disposal to create more quality jobs, the country's chief economic policymaker, Kim Dong-yeon, said earlier.

In January, President Moon Jae-in called for an all-out effort to create new quality jobs for young people and said the country's high youth jobless rate is a national disaster.

Creating quality jobs, especially for the young, was one of Moon's key election pledges. The president has promised to add 810,000 new jobs in the public sector during his single five-year term, which ends in May 2022. (Yonhap)