LABOUR-JAPAN: Job Worries Rise with Climbing Jobless Rate

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Feb 7 2002 (IPS) - Japanese student Keisuke Watanabe, 21, is not graduating from university until April, but he is already worried about ending up jobless.

University students used to get job offers even before they got their degrees, but this is changing under Japan’s gloomy employment picture. Just last week, the jobless figure for December hit yet another post- war high level — 5.6 percent or 3.37 million people in this country of 127 million people.

Ths rate means that for every 100 people looking for work , only 51 jobs were offered as of December. Japan’s jobless rate also tops that of the United States, which stood at 4.8 percent in 2001.

Thus, Watanabe. a third-year student of economics at Dokkyo University in the Tokyo suburb of Saitama, has been busy attending job fairs and asking friends about work possibilities they hear about.

“I am determined to be patient,” says the student, queueing up at an employment fair attended by 10,000 other students, all waiting in line to talk to consultants. “I will wait till I find the right job.”

But Watanabe might have to wait longer than he expects. “The job situation is only getting tougher for young people these days as companies are forced to increase their pace of restructuring,” says Kei University professor Atsushi Seki, an expert in the labour market.

“The future generation is facing entirely new employment standards in Japan,” he adds.

Seki is referring to how economic pressure has been forcing companies to shift from using seniority and lifetime employment as standards for employment, to casual contracts, part-time work or systems that case salaries on ability.

But while few expect the job situation to improve soon, some Japanese companies and unemployed workers are finding new ways of coping with harder times. These may yet indicate new trends in Japan’s labour market.

Take Kiyomi Ogawara, a 51-year-old former employee who used to handle marketing orders for expensive business suits at a large apparel company, and now waits on tables in a fashionable restaurant here.

Ogawara found the job after attending a seminar organised by the Tokyo metropolitan government, geared to train senior workers in new job skills. He says he has no complaints: “I am enjoying being a waiter. I am grateful for the job.”

Other former company employees are also taking agricultural training from farmers, and middle-aged men are trying out new areas such as Caregiving or even trying their luck as fishermen.

Some changes are also afoot in the corporate world. Apart from early retirement offers, some firms are experimenting with a new system of work sharing.

Last month, Sanyo Electric Company, which is now moving more of its production bases overseas, became one of the few major companies to introduce a work-sharing system after an agreement with its labour union.

Under the plan to be carried out for three years and affecting 30,000 workers, the company will not cut hourly wages and a maximum limit will be set on the decline of employees’ salaries.

Sanyo reports that it expects a 10 to 20 percent reduction in its personnel costs with the new system.

“Work sharing is an effective way to fight record unemployment reducing firing outright. This is a system better suited to the Japanese who are not used to the harsh system of being fired overnight,” comments Hiroshi Okuda, chairman of Japan Federation of Employers’ Associations.

Still, though, the worsening job situation continues to paint an increasingly stark future for Japan, the world’s second largest economy.

Consumers are tightening their purse strings and holding back on political support for the government of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, whose popularity has fallen to 56 percent last week from 74.6 percent previously.

Koizumi has been spearheading new restructuring plans to push the nation out of more than a decade long recession.

“I thought the (jobless rate) for the next fiscal year would stay around 5.6 percent but it has reached that level earlier than expected. I am very concerned,” Heizo Tanaka, economic and fiscal policy minister, says, referring to earlier official predictions that the unemployment rate would stay at 5.4 percent.

The hardest hit were workers in the construction and manufacturing industry, while increases were recorded in the telecommunication and service industry.

The latest government figures also show that workers who lost their jobs due to restructuring, corporate bankruptcy and other factors rose 310,000 from a year earlier to 1.25 million in 2001.

In addition, the government report reveals that the number of unemployed people between 25 and 34 years of age jumped by 170,000 from a year earlier to 940,000 as of last year.

Male workers were particularly hard hit by the current job crunch. The average 5.6 percent total unemployment rate in December is made up of 5.8 percent for men, and 5.1 percent for women.

The number of people without jobs for more than a year is now 310,000, a sharp increase from the 80,000 posted in 1990.

The Labour Ministry also reports that compared with a year earlier, job offers in 2001 declined 7.2 percent, decreasing 32.5 percent in manufacturing and slightly increasing in service industries.