The number of female employees who are in their 30s has increased by around 110,000 from a year ago, while that of male workers in the same age group has declined by some 80,000, according to government data, Sunday.

According to Statistics Korea and Microdata Integrated Service, the number of female workers who are aged 30-39 reached 2.17 million, up 108,000 from a year ago. The figure for male workers in the age group reached 3.12 million, down 84,000 on-year.

In total, the number of employed people in their 30s climbed 24,000 in April.

Statistics Korea data also showed that the number of employed women in the 30-39 age group has been increasing for 16 straight months since December 2021, while the figure for male workers has been on the decline for 14 consecutive months since February last year.

“Recently, increasing employment in the health and welfare industry, in which nurses and nurse assistants take up a large proportion, fueled recent increases in the number of overall female workers, whereas the number of male workers fell along with slowdowns in manufacturing and construction hiring,” an official from Statistics Korea said.

The health and welfare industry in Korea has been hiring more due to the pandemic and there is increasing demand for health care workers particularly at senior care facilities.

Returning working mothers, who had stopped working at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, have also partly contributed to the increased number of female workers. Declining marriage and birthrates too were linked to women continuing their careers, local reports said.

The official from Statistics Korea also said that increases in the average age in which women marry for the first time as well as get pregnant have also had impacts on the increasing number of female workers who are in their 30s.

Along with the higher number of female workers, the employment rate for women who are in their 30s also reached an all-time record following 1999, when the government started to collect related data after changing its statistical system on employment.

In April this year, the labor force participation rate of women in their 30s came to 69.2 percent, and the overall employment rate of the women in the age group came to 67.1 percent, both up by some 4 percent from a year ago.

The labor force participation rate is calculated as the labor force divided by the total working-age population, which refers to people aged 15 to 64.