Photo/Illutration Job seekers at a public employment security office in Tokyo last November (Hiroki Hashimoto)

The ranks of the long-term unemployed in Japan, those looking for jobs who remained out of work for a year or longer, hit a four-year high in 2021 based on a monthly average, a survey by the internal affairs ministry showed.

It found that 660,000 individuals fell into this category, up 130,000 from a year earlier, marking a second consecutive year of increase.

Those struggling to find re-employment were hampered by fewer job opportunities due to the prolonged novel coronavirus pandemic.

The results of the ministry’s Labor Force Survey were released Feb. 15.

It found that 1.93 million people, 20,000 more than the previous year, wanted to work in 2021 but could not secure employment. The figure was calculated on the basis of a monthly average.

Long-term unemployed individuals accounted for 34.2 percent of the total, up 6.5 points year on year.

The long-term domestic unemployment tally rose to 1.21 million in 2010 following the collapse of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers two years previously. Subsequently, the figure dropped continuously until it reached 510,000 in 2019, then started to rise again as the pandemic impacted the economy.

The public employment security office in Tokyo’s Ikebukuro district said the situation is particularly tough for job seekers in the restaurant, accommodation and tourism sectors.

In many cases, job seekers found themselves out of work for a prolonged period due to a lack of vacancies in the job categories in which they formerly worked. Even when trying to forge new career paths, age and inexperience often counted against them, the survey found.

Employers were more aggressive in their recruitment efforts between October and December last year following the lifting of the fourth declaration of a state of emergency.

Consequently, total unemployment and its long-term counterpart fell for the second quarter in a row to 1.78 million and 640,000, respectively.

“There are no clear signs of an improvement in labor market conditions,” said Taro Saito, an executive research fellow at the Economic Research Department of the NLI Research Institute, noting that jobless people who are not actively seeking work rose by 160,000 in the October-December quarter from the same period of the previous year.

An employment adjustment subsidy program run by the government provides special funds to partially cover suspended business operators’ expenses for employees’ leave allowances.

Saito said this will likely have the effect of helping to rein in not only unemployment but also new employment.

Restrictions imposed on restaurant operators, coupled with a near-blanket ban on entry into Japan following the spread of the Omicron variant of the novel coronavirus earlier this year, posed another challenge, he said.

“The economy and the employment environment will not improve unless the employment adjustment subsidy program is reduced and the restrictions are eased,” Saito said.

Related News