Following the release of bleak job data for last month, Finance Minister Hong Nam-ki said that the government will actively try to increase jobs in the public sector. 

The minister said on Wednesday during a meeting with the heads of economic-related ministries that he feels great responsibility for the grim job situation shown in the January data, saying the government will make creating jobs its top priority. 

As part of efforts to boost employment, Hong said the government will add more than two-thousand jobs to its original plan to have public firms hire 23-thousand people this year. 

The minister added that in order to revitalize the private sector, the government will complete its review of 20 requests for regulatory exemptions by early next month and announce a job creation model for local areas this month.

He also noted the sharp rise in the number of older people seeking jobs appears to be the main factor in the nation’s unemployment rate rising to a nine-year high in January.