Seoul,  South Korea added more than 1 million jobs in January, marking the fastest increase in nearly 22 years, showed data from Statistics Korea on Wednesday.

The number of those employed totaled 26,953,000 in January, up 1,135,000 from a year earlier, according to Statistics Korea. It was the highest growth in almost 22 years since March 2000, Xinhua news agency reported.

In January 2021, employment tumbled by 982,000 on a yearly basis due to the negative effect from the Covid pandemic.

The country's employment continued to rise for the 11th consecutive month since March last year.

The number of unemployed fell from 427,000, a year earlier, to 1,143,000 in January, and the unemployment rate retreated 1.6 percentage points to 4.1 per cent.