The unemployment rate improved to 3.6 percent in February from 3.7 percent the previous month, government data showed Friday, indicating that the expansion in corporate profits has prompted companies to hire more workers on the back of the nascent economic recovery.
The figure is the lowest since July 2007, before the collapse of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in September 2008 caused the global financial crisis.
The number of unemployed people fell a seasonally adjusted 3.7 percent from a month earlier to 2.33 million, as those quitting jobs involuntarily fell 5.0 percent to 760,000, the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry said in a preliminary report.