[any comments from our Japan correspondents?]
At 8:37 AM -0500 3/1/02, The Dismal Scientist wrote:
>Employment Situation for Japan (5.3 % Unemployment)
>
>The Japanese labor data continue to look bad, with employment
>falling, and unemployment rising. The unemployment rate, however,
>fell by 0.2 percentage points to 5.3%, as workers dropped out of the
>labor force. The unemployment rate, while high by Japanese
>standards, nevertheless masks a much higher incidence of
>joblessness, which will continue to rise through the first half, at
>least.
The last time I was in Japan (I grew up there), about two years ago, I was amazed to see so many homeless people, particularly in public areas such as Ueno Park in downtown Tokyo and Inokashira Park in the western suburb of Kichijoji. More recently, unemployment has definitely worsened with the 'financial reforms' being pushed by the Koizumi government, where more and more banks (some of them US-owned) pull the plug on failing companies instead of handing out more financial lifelines. But there's always been more people without work than the statistics show. There's an old tradition known as 'shoulder-tapping' where workers 50 years old & higher are 'asked' to retire when times are bad, as they were during the 1970s oil crisis and many large manufacturing companies had to cut back. Managers in steel mills and shipyards would come around and 'tap' certain workers, who would retire without collecting unemployment and go off and find work sweeping floors or cleaning nuclear power plants. Things are rough out there, as Dylan reminds us in Love & Theft.
Tim Shorrock Silver Spring MD