Japan GDP and Working-age Adult: Updated Nov. 5, 2024.

Japan's GDP growth surprisingly strong per working-age adult: study

Article Source: https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20241019/p2g/00m/0bu/045000c

Ideas:

This is not surprising if you consider the working population from 30 to 65 they are more secure than the 18 to 30 age group who are still trying to get it together along with maybe having young families and family expenses to deal with.

And in Japan, many young people still don't have good jobs because of the stagnant economy and there some or many who have given up and not looking for work.

Also some or many are working on contract jobs which pay less and with no real benefits, so they don't spend as much as those in the 30 to 65 age group.

This study throws everything out the window about Japan being a robust economy, if you just consider what is looked at here. As Japan has long been considered a stagnant almost no growth economy for many years.

But this might be an example of many economies where the 18 to 30 are struggling to get good jobs and probably don't spend as much as those in the 30 to 65 age group.

At the same time, its always been known that the 30 to 65 age group does spend more than the 18 to 30 age group for obvious reasons, as they latter usually don't have good or stable jobs yet.

If the economic downturn is considered a long with the growth rate, then Japan is not doing so well at 1.39 percent while the US is at 1.65 percent. To be honest, it seemed Japan should have been much lower than 1.39 percent as many years they didn't have much growth.

But at the same time, the growth rate underscores the above ideas that the 30 to 65 age group in Japan were the more economically active participates while those in the 18 to 30 age groups were not spending that much, as expected.

All there countries mentioned, Japan, the US and Britain are advanced economies and don't grow like they used to, for example most advanced economies rarely get above 2 percent economic growth.

At the present time, in Japan, there is a significant labor shortage so many older workers are either re-entering the work force and or staying much longer than years before. And at the same time, while the US doesn't have mandatory retirement laws, Japan does, but they are thinking of revising the law due to the severe labor shortage, along with the idea that many Japanese need and want to keep working.

In years to come, if there continues to be a labor shortage, and the economy is not growing that good, more and more older Japanese will continue to work, either due to necessity and or the need to keep active.

Japan has always had a low labor productivity, as most jobs in Japan were not performance focused, meaning workers didn't lose their jobs if they didn't perform at a certain level. Japan continues to have one of the lowest work productivity levels among the advanced economies, as promotion is based on years of working instead of work performance.

However, there is a positive to the idea of low productivity and not losing their jobs, and they have more stability in their work lives and don't need to worry that much about being fired or laid-off.

Increasing the fertility rate is a given, but at the same time, Japan needs to improve the work-life experience for working women. Many Japanese women, remember how their mothers suffered while they were growing up and then there is the high cost of raising children in Japan, and many young married couples either don't want children or can't afford to have children.

Its the same situation in South Korea now, which also has the lowest birth rate among all countries for the same exact reasons, mothers suffered, high cost of raising children, and not the best situations for working women in both countries.

Have a nice day!