Men accounted for one-third of employees who took child care leave in the first half of this year, marking the first time the male proportion has surpassed 30 percent, labor data showed Sunday. A total of 69,631 employees received their first child care leave allowance from the national employment insurance program during the January-June period, marking an increase of 3.2 percent compared to the same period last year, according to the labor ministry statistics. Of them, men accounted for 22,460 employees, representing a 15.7 percent increase from the same period last year, while women numbered 47,171, marking a 1.8 percent decline. The change increased the male proportion to 32.3 percent, or nearly 1 in 3 employees on child care leave, marking the first time the male share has surpassed the 30 percent threshold. The corresponding male share was 8.7 percent in 2016 and had since steadily increased to 13.4 percent in 2017, 21.2 percent in 2019, 26.2 percent in 2021 and 28.9 percent in 2022 before slightly retreating to 28 percent last year. In the first half of this year, male workers on child care leave in large companies with 1,000 or more employees made up 43.5 percent, while the corresponding proportion was 22.7 percent in small firms with fewer than 100 employees. The increase in child care leave among male workers is widely attributed to this year's expansion of the national allowance for couples taking child care leave at the same time. Source: Yonhap News Agency