Japan Jobless Rate Hits Record High TOKYO (AP) -- Japan's unemployment rate hit a record high of 4.4 percent in November as companies struggling in the country's worst recession in decades trimmed their workforces and suffered a wave of bankruptcies, the government said today. The November rate tops the previous record of 4.3 percent. Those hit the worst were workers at medium-sized companies, where employment fell 1.4 percent from a year earlier. The jobless rate -- the highest since the government started measuring it in the 1950s -- also set another record: It was the first time Japan's unemployment rate equaled that of the United States, where the jobless rate also was 4.4 percent in November, said an official at the Management and Coordination Agency. The total number of workers shrank by 480,000 from a year ago to 64.81 million, marking the 10th straight month of year-on-year declines, according to the agency's statistics bureau. The total number of jobless stood at 2.91 million. The new unemployment figure comes as Japan is grappling with its deepest recession since the end of World War II. Bankruptcy debts have hit record highs, domestic consumption is stagnant and the financial system is weighed down by massive bad debts. The government does not expect a quick recovery. Taichi Sakaiya, head of the Economic Planning Agency, said today that the employment situation would probably worsen before it gets better. ``There's strong pressure for the jobless rate to rise,'' he said. The Labor Ministry said today that the ratio of job offers to job seekers, an indicator of demand for labor, fell to a new record low of 0.47 in November, indicating that there were only 47 jobs being offered for every 100 workers seeking employment. The new job offers ratio showed there were 85 new jobs for every 100 people newly seeking work. A year ago, the ratio stood at 1.16. New job offers in the manufacturing sector plunged by nearly 29 percent from a year earlier. New job offers in the construction industry shrank by 6.3 percent from last year despite an increase in public works spending from a $143.5 billion fiscal stimulus package working its way through the economy. The number of workers who left their jobs unwillingly surged 360,000 in November from a year ago to 920,000, reflecting an increase in the number of bankruptcies and the accelerating pace of corporate downsizing. A rise in the number of people looking for work was another factor boosting the unemployment rate, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Normally, the number of people looking for work declines around the end of the year. But this year, due to the severity of the economy, more people either continued to look for work or began looking, the official said.
