Japan Jobs:

 Article Source:  https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20220426/p2g/00m/0bu/020000c

Article:

TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Japan saw the first improvement in its average job availability ratio in three years in 2021, likely reflecting the gradual economic recovery from the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic, government data showed Tuesday.

The job-to-applicant ratio for the year through March rose 0.06 point to 1.16, according to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare. The ratio means there were 116 job openings for every 100 job seekers.

Ideas:

Many countries would love to have a 116 job openings for every 100 job seekers ratio. But a questions must be asked in what kinds of jobs are being offered? 

Are they low level jobs or reasonable jobs that pay a decent salary for the average worker. Sometimes there are reports of increases in jobs and increaese in overall employment but looking at the real meaning see see that many of the jobs were low level jobs and not really good salary related type jobs.

In reality it might take some time before gets back to any kind of the majore companies from hiring like they did before the pandemic and then of course the main challenge is being able to offer salary increases that workers have been looking for and maybe the current level of inflation may delay any needed salary increases.

Article:

But the figure was still low compared with prepandemic levels, which registered 1.55 in fiscal 2019 before the economy was affected by the emergence of the pandemic.

Separate government data showed the average jobless rate dropped 0.1 percentage point to 2.8 percent in fiscal 2021.

The average number of unemployed people in fiscal 2021 decreased 80,000 from the previous year to 1.91 million and that of people in work grew 40,000 to 67.06 million, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications said.

Ideas:

Even though the jobless rate decreased there still might be a sizeable number of people in society who have given up looking for work. Especially those were are or were in the services sector which was hit the hardest by the pandemic.

For example the tourism sector, which is part of the overall sevices sector, is not even close to getting back to the pre-pandemic level. 

And as international tourists are still not allowed into Japan, its going to take a very long time to get back to the 2019 level of 31 million international tourists that entered Japan that year.

And with the Japanese yen weakening rapidly that is a lot of yen/money that is not coming into Japan which the Japanese economy desperately needs as the Q1 GDP growth was a -0.1 percent. 

Article:

In March alone, the job availability ratio improved to 1.22 from 1.21 in the previous month, climbing for the third consecutive month, the government said.

The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 2.6 percent in March, down 0.1 point from the previous month, improving for the second month in a row.

Ideas:

A country's unemployment rate will never reach 0 percent as there are always workers in transition meaning they are in the process of changing jobs. or some have decided to leave the workforce and some might have been looking for jobs for a very long time and have not been able to find a job yet.

As above, as the services sector was hit the hardest and the tourism sector the hardest hit in the services area, jobs in the tourism area may take a very long time to recover and again no international tourists are really allowed to enter Japan.

With 31 million international tourists entering Japan in 2019 that means they had to stay some where, they ate somewhere, they traveled to places somewhere, and they bought many things somewhere. 

So that means there were a lot of jobs related to international tourists at the time that might not come back for a long time until the Japanese government begins to understand that they need to open the economy and let the money flow back in as a Q1 GDP of -0.1 percent is not helping the economy.

Open the flood gates, make it easy to get into Japan and then watch the Japanese economy begin to get back to some kind of reasonable economic growth.

Have a nice day and be safe!