FIGURES ON TAKING PARENTAL LEAVE

[Anchor Lead]

Some 170,000 parents took time off work for childcare reasons last year, nearly double that from a decade ago. Especially men taking parental leave has topped 20% for the first time.

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According to Statistics Korea, around 169-thousand-300 people began parental leave last year. It’s up 3.7% from the previous year and more than double from 2010 when the figure was 73-thousand. 38-thousand men took paternity leave, accounting for 22.7% of the total. It’s the first time the figure has surpassed 20% since relevant data began to be compiled. Among parents with newborns last year, those who used parental leave actually fell 4% to just over 73-thousand. This is due to a smaller number of births. However the number of leaves for every 100 births has increased by 1.6 to 26.8 parents. Despite fewer births, paternity leave increased 7.4% last year. Statistics Korea attributed the rise in men to an increase in wages for the second parent taking leave when both the father and mother are off work to take care of children. The pandemic is also believed to be a factor. Over 63% of parental leaves were employees of large firms with over 300 workers, showing it’s still easier to apply for leave at bigger companies. But the ratio was down by 1.6 percentage points from the previous year. More than 74% of parents who had one child used their leave when their baby was less than 12 months old. 10.3% did so when the child turned six. Also, 18.5% of parents split their child care leave to have time off work more than once.