Japan Press Weekly

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2019 January 9 - 15 [POLITICS]

FY2019 budget plan to be revised to pay unpaid labor insurance benefits due to Labor Ministry’s faulty survey data

Akahata on January 10 learned that the Abe government began discussing amendments to the FY2019 budget draft in order to cover the payments for unpaid labor insurance benefits, including unemployment benefits, which stemmed from faulty data on monthly labor surveys by the Labor Ministry. The government payments will amount to tens of billions of yen.

A monthly labor survey shows changes in cash earnings, real wages, and other working conditions. The survey is conducted on about 33,000 business entities across Japan. Under the existing rules, the ministry is obliged to collect data from all companies with more than 500 employees.

However, in December 2018, it was revealed that in Tokyo, the ministry every month carried out the survey by sampling only 500 out of 1,400 companies with more than 500 employees. This raised doubts about the accuracy of the wage level in the published data because the survey results contained the data collected from a partial number of big companies in Tokyo. The use of the faulty survey method reportedly began in 2004.

The monthly labor statistics are used to determine the amount of benefits paid to workers who lost their jobs as well as to workers who claimed workers’ accident compensation. In addition, the statistical data are also used to calculate Japan’s GDP. Given this, the impact of the erroneous labor survey data will probably increase.