February 5, 2011

Japanese Communist Party lawmaker Miyamoto Takeshi demanded that the government urge major companies to offer more jobs to college graduates at a House of Representatives Budget Committee meeting on February 4.

As of December last year, only 68.8 % of students graduating from college in March found jobs, the lowest rate since the survey began. Miyamoto pointed out that many corporations have drastically reduced the number of new employees for spring, such as Toyota Mortors (one-third less than 2006) and Panasonic (60 percent less than 2008).

Meanwhile, Toyota made the world’s highest number of unit sales for three years in a row. It has brought its level of profits back to the level before the collapse of Lehman Brothers, partly thanks to the government’s eco-car subsidies of 600 billion yen.

Education Minister Takaki Yoshiaki said that he will call on major firms to hire more graduating students during a meeting dealing with new graduates’ job-finding activities which the government will hold in mid-February with business and college representatives.

Miyamoto stressed that major corporations can employ 126,000 more college graduates by using only 0.2 percent of the 244 trillion yen they have amassed in internal reserves.