One 27 july 2009 I commented on this on OPE list. "One Japanese writer points out that:
"In Japan, whoever works even 1 hour a week, whoever turns down a job, or is employed a week a month, is considered as employed. As a result, the Japanese have long boasted at their low unemployment rates. (...) our real unemployment rate (...) [is] 5,4% looking for work, and 20,1% not looking for work." http://www.jref.com/forum/showthread.php?p=112655 The Japan Statistics Office reports that: The number of employed persons in May 2009 was 63.4 million, a decrease of 1.36 million or -2.1% from the previous year. Out of these 1.36 million people, 770,000 (56.6%) are classified unemployed, the rest presumably drop out of the labour force. http://www.stat.go.jp/english/data/roudou/154.htm But that is not all - there are, in the space of one year, some 5.7 million extra Japanese employees, still on the payroll, who are now are virtually redundant because there is no work at the office or factory, bringing the total up to 6 million. It is a sort of additional "hidden" unemployment: "Amid the global economic crisis that started last year, the number of excess workers at Japanese companies during the first three months of 2009 is believed to have increased to up to 6.07 million, the highest level since 1980, a government report said Friday. (...) A year earlier, not more than 380,000 employees were regarded as redundant. The office said Japanese firms have done their best to maintain employment even under severe business conditions, but they are reaching their capacity limits. Of the 6.07 million, the Cabinet Office estimates that up to 3.69 million people being hired by manufacturers had virtually no work to do in the January-March period, up from about 60,000 a year ago. If 6.07 million people lose their jobs, Japan's jobless rate would reach around 14 percent, which is more than twice the postwar record-worst 5.5 percent, according to Cabinet Office officials. (...) The report also noted that income gaps are widening as the number of part-time and other nonregular employees have grown rapidly over the past years." http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20090725a2.html The official unemployment rate is set to rise more or less linearly: "A survey by the Economic Planning Association of 36 economists from June 25 to July 2 found an average prediction that unemployment will reach 5.56 percent this October to December. The jobless rate was 5.2 percent in May. The worst unemployment rate on record is 5.5 percent, logged most recently in April 2003." http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20090727a4.html This would imply that from now until the end of the year, the employed workforce would shink by another half million people or so, of which about 230,000 would be classified unemployed. The hope is that a recovery from the recession (defined by renewed growth of output) will bring the growth of unemployment to a halt, but this does not seem very likely, I think it is more likely that unemployment will continue to increase for several years, and then stabilise at some point at a durably higher level." _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
