Japan Press Weekly

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2013 July 10 - 16 [LABOR]

PM Abe boasts creation of ‘more jobs’ while more workers give up looking for jobs

Prime Minister Abe Shinzo has stressed that the job market shows an improvement as the ratio of job offers to job seekers has increased. Behind an increase in the ratio, however, a growing number of unemployed workers have given up their job searches with the prolonged recession of the Japanese economy.

Labor Ministry survey results showed that the active job-offers-to-seekers ratio gradually rose to 0.90 in May from 0.82 in November 2012 before the inauguration of the Abe government.

During the same period, the number of people seeking jobs decreased to 2.32 million by 93,938.

Meanwhile, data released by the Internal Affairs Ministry on May 14 indicate that 650,000 people remain unemployed for more than two years and the number of discouraged jobseekers reached 1.44 million.

Another major factor in the decrease in the number of jobseekers is that they have very few offers for stable jobs. In May, the demand-supply ratio for those who are seeking full-time employment was 0.49.

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The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication on July 12 announced that the number of non-regular workers increased to about 20.43 million by about 1.53 million from the previous survey in 2007, topping the 20 million mark for the first time.

The percentage of non-regular workers also climbed to 38.2%, up 2.7 percentage point from the previous survey.

Compared with the results of a similar survey conducted in 1993, 9.9 million or 16.5% more workers are now working as non-full-time workers.