South Korea suffered the biggest on-year job losses in the business sector last month amid the coronavirus outbreak, the Ministry of Employment and Labor said Thursday.

According to the ministry’s monthly labor force report, domestic business entities with more than one worker had 1.82 million employees in April, down 2 percent, or 365,000 employees, from the same month last year.

It is the second time that the figure has fallen since data started being compiled in June 2009. The first decline was in March, when the number of workers at such business entities fell 1.2 percent to 1.83 million employees.

The ministry said the job losses likely resulted from contracted economic activities due to the nationwide social distancing campaign and subsequent closure of various facilities, including schools.

The accommodation and food services sectors suffered the biggest employee loss of 166,000 people, followed by the education services (93,000), facility management (59,000) and manufacturing (56,000).

The monthly statistics also proved that the impact of COVID-19 on the job market was more acute for non-regular workers, employees of small companies and offline customer service workers.

While the number of regular workers decreased by 0.9 percent in April, the number of non-regular workers and employees in special types of jobs sharply dropped 7.9 percent and 7.5 percent, respectively.

By Ko Jun-tae (ko.juntae@heraldcorp.com)