South Korea’s economic freedom climbed to 14th in the world this year, but the nation received a relatively low score in the labor market.

The Korea Enterprises Federation on Wednesday presented the analysis of the 2024 Index of Economic Freedom report by The Heritage Foundation, which is based in the U.S. 

The annual report comprehensively estimates a country’s economic freedom by using 12 indicators across four broad pillars comprising the rule of law, government size, regulatory efficiency and market openness. It then classifies countries’ economic freedom into five categories: free, mostly free, moderately free, mostly unfree, and repressed.

South Korea received 73-point-one points out of a possible 100 to rank 14th among 184 countries this year, up one notch from a year ago. It remained among the second-tier “mostly free” nations as in last year. 

The country’s labor market, however, received 57-point-two points, the lowest score among all categories, placing 87th to fall into the fourth-tier category, “mostly unfree.”

Compared to other major countries, the United States received 77-point-seven points, and Italy and Canada each scored around 70 points in the category. 

Singapore topped this year’s index, falling into the top-tier “free” countries along with Switzerland, Ireland and Taiwan. China and North Korea ranked near the bottom at 151st and 176th, respectively.