Japan's Jobless Rate:

 https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20210629/p2g/00m/0bu/020000c

Article:

TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Japan's unemployment rate worsened to 3.0 percent in May, hitting the highest level in five months, as a government state of emergency over the coronavirus pandemic was extended to more of the country, government data showed Tuesday.

The seasonally adjusted jobless rate rose from 2.8 percent in April, up for the second straight month, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. It had stayed in the upper half of the 2 percent range since logging 3.0 percent in December.

Ideas:

Japan has had and still has one of the lowest unemployment rates among advanced economies. While 3.0 percent might not be good for Japan, its still very good among many countries.

But even though the unemployment rate is only 3.0 it still doesn't tell the entire story about employment. Such as how many jobs in the economy now are part-time, temporary, and or contract jobs with little or no benefits.

After the 2008 financial crisis, many companies in Japan and globally started to shift their work force to more contract or temporary workers instead of the so-called full-time or even the so-called life-time jobs in Japan.

So is it possible that during the pandemic Japanese companies are going to increase the number of employees who are part-time, contract, or temporary workers.

An economy can't survive or grow correctly if there are too many temporary contract workers. Workers are consumers or spenders in the economy. If they don't have enough disposable income, or extra income, the are not going to use their money in the economy, except for their daily basic needs.

Article:

Separate data from the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare showed that the job availability ratio in May was unchanged from a month earlier at 1.09, meaning that there were 109 job openings for every 100 job seekers. It fell 0.01 point in April.

In the final week of the reporting month, 10 out of the nation's 47 prefectures were under a third state of emergency over the virus that was initially declared in late April for Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka and Hyogo but expanded later.

Ideas:

Again what kinds of jobs are available for workers. If they are good paying jobs then the economy will grow correctly and move forward correctly. If they are not or if there are a lot of contract type jobs, which usually have a lower pay, then the workers are not going to feel good spending any extra income they have because they don't think its enough.

As such the Japanese economy, or any economy is not going to reach it full growth potential. Workers again, are consumers, and they need to feel good about about their jobs and their salaries and how much disposable income, or extra income, they have before they fully participate in the economy as consumers.

The new emergency measure, while most likely needed, might need encouragement to consumers to get out and spend, and its not going to bring encouragement to those businesses that have to close early and lose sales and profits.

Article:

With requests for people to stay home, alcohol-serving establishments to close temporarily and other commercial facilities to cut operating hours, the measure was repeatedly extended beyond the initial end date of May 11, dealing a blow to the world's third-largest economy.

Except for the southern island prefecture of Okinawa, the virus emergency was lifted last week, but among the 10 prefectures, seven including Tokyo have shifted to a quasi-state of emergency, allowing targeted anti-virus measures for specific areas rather than entire prefectures.

Ideas:

The continued pandemic situation in some ways might be causing problems for companies and hiring, even though the job availability ratio appears quite high. 

For some companies, as with any economy, as an economy is very complex, the pandemic might not be affecting them that much. But of course with some companies the pandemic is having huge affects as a result of less customers, less sales, and less profits.

The longer the pandemic continues the more stress some companies are going to have if they can't get some support such as subsidies from the Japanese government.

Article: 

The latest outcome showed that the number of people in work fell 130,000 from the previous month to 66.45 million, down for the third consecutive month.

The number of unemployed increased 100,000 from April to 2.04 million. Among them, 810,000 people voluntarily left their jobs, up 70,000, while 630,000 were laid off, up 30,000, and 480,000 were new job seekers, down 10,000.

Ideas:

So it seems the pandemic is still causing many challenges in the Japanese economy has lost even more jobs.

The challenge with these numbers, people, is will they be able to go back to work in jobs that they had before the pandemic situation.

For example the those who voluntarily left their jobs, will they be able to return to the jobs they had before the pandemics. Those who were laid off will they be able to return to their previous jobs.

And then can these people find good meaningful well paying, if they had those kinds of jobs before the pandemic.

The pandemic or any major shift in an economy, if the pandemic has caused that, can bring major shifts or changes in the kind of jobs available once the situation ends.

Article:

The gender gap in the jobless rate narrowed, as that for men was flat at 3.2 percent while that for women was up 0.4 percentage point to 2.7 percent.

"The outcome seems to reflect the fact that more female workers continued to look for new jobs," a government official told reporters, saying such women included those laid off as companies struggled due to the pandemic and those who voluntarily quit their jobs.

Ideas:

Globally women seemed to have the biggest challenges related to the pandemic and jobs. Most likely because, unfortunately, many women work in service type jobs, which at the present time is the sector that is most affected by the pandemic.

If you add in child-care costs and if they have children in school, and the children have or have to study online at home, it adds extra stress on women who for the most part take care of children.

Have a nice day and be safe!