-Caveat Lector-
The Washington Times
www.washtimes.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rising joblessness threatens security
Osamu Tsukimori
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published 9/5/2001
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In Japan, a country where lifetime employment was once the norm, lives are being
devastated by the
highest unemployment rate since World War II.
Nearly 1,000 people a day visit the employment referral center in the Tokyo
neighborhood of Iidabashi to
look for work. Most go away empty-handed.
The government last week reported that Japan's jobless rate edged up to 5 percent
in July, the highest
since the government began keeping statistics in 1953. There were 3.3 million people
out of work, up by
230,000 from a year earlier.
Japan's Nikkei stock market index also ended the lowest on Monday at a 17-year
low.
Finding work is tough even in Tokyo, where there are 77 job offers for 100
seekers, said Tatsuo Sasaki of
the Iidabashi employment center. The national average is 100 job seekers for every 60
jobs.
The newly unemployed include many people like Kazuaki Asano, 54, who recently
lost his job at the bank
where he had worked since he was 23. "It's hopeless. I'm wondering what I should do,"
Mr. Asano said in an
interview with the Associated Press.
Japanese had long believed the jobs they started in their youth would last until
they retired. The shock
of unemployment, especially for those supporting families, has been directly blamed
for more than 6,000
suicides, as the overall suicide rate - 32,000 last year - has topped 30,000 for three
straight years.
Last month, two jobless brothers, aged 32 and 26, died from starvation in rural
Japan. Police found no
food in their refrigerator except for a few pickled plums.
Experts say the unemployment rate will get worse before it gets better.
James R. Lincoln, a professor at the Walter A. Haas School of Business at the
University of
California-Berkeley, said it wouldn't surprise him if the rate reached 6 percent
within the next year or two.
"I certainly don't think we are going to see a reversal of the trend anytime
soon," Mr. Lincoln said in a
telephone interview.
"An awful lot depends on what the U.S. economy does. If the U.S. economy plunges
into a full-blown
recession, things will get much worse in Japan. Japan is so tied to the U.S. as a
market."
Job cuts are spreading to big manufacturers that had long been considered safe
places to work.
The electronics giant Toshiba Corp. said it would cut 17,000 employees
domestically, or 12 percent of its
work force, by 2004. Hitachi Ltd. said Friday it would cut 14,700 jobs. The high-tech
company NEC Corp.
slashed 4,000 employees. Fujitsu and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. also announced
layoffs recently.
Michiko Ito Crampe, a partner in the New York law firm Morrison & Foerster, said
she expects the jobless
rate to rise over the next few months as many of those employees file for unemployment
benefits and begin to
show up in the statistics.
To try to ease the hardship, the government has promised companies a subsidy of
about $2,500 for every
jobless person they hire aged 45 or older.
The economic slowdown has been made worse by a number of Japanese companies
shifting production overseas
to escape high labor costs. But more than 1 million other workers have voluntarily
quit their jobs to seek new
opportunities.
Tokyo resident Daisuke Ito, 31, left his job at a life insurance company a few
years ago and now is
pursuing a master's degree in economics at Hitotsubashi University. He teaches English
part-time, earning
barely enough to pay his tuition.
"I don't feel like climbing a corporate ladder at all," he said in a telephone
interview. "I'd rather
value my freedom than being bound by a career. Japanese are now looking for more than
just job security.
Uncertainties about the future penetrate the entire country."
Mrs. Crampe predicted that, in spite of their anguish, Japanese will learn to
adjust. They "will continue
to have dreams," she said. But they "will have smaller dreams, smaller housing and
smaller cars."
Copyright © 2001 News World Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.
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