South Korea added 108,000 jobs in July and posted a record 70.3% employment rate for people aged 15 to 64 according to the Ministry of Employment and Labor on Wednesday, but the figures increasingly reflect the country’s changing age structure, and expanding care economy, more clearly than they describe growth in its productive workforce.

The headline improvement masks a striking shift underneath. Employment among people aged 15 to 64 fell by 226,000 from a year earlier even as their employment rate rose according to the Ministry of Data and Statistics. Employment among people aged 60 and over increased by