Japan's May jobless rate 2.6%; 1st rise in 4 months

They need to wheel out some old men with glo-sticks directing traffic in order to get these numbers down!

"Many people left jobs in search of better conditions amid easing coronavirus-related restrictions," an internal affairs ministry official told reporters.

This canard again. he ministry officials job of coming up with excuses seems so easy.

The number of homeless is going up too as people search for better homes they say as well.

But Yuichi Kodama, chief economist at the Meiji Yasuda Research Institute, said, "The momentum for hiring has not led to appropriate wage increases yet," while food and resource prices have been driven higher by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

And the "momentum" will never be there. Maybe the government should increase the consumption tax and use that money to subsidize businesses to raise wages?

That is how it seems to work under the LDP's "new capitalism".

What starts with a R and rhymes with obsession?

These numbers, as always are misleading, people dont forget that out of the a little over 67 million people employed it does NOT count (SHOULD discount) the number that are underemployed to get a better idea of the percentages.

Working ONE hour per week makes a person gainfully employed here. Contracted employees, part-time with no benefits, seasonable labor, and everyone else who WANT to be gainfully but are not, are included in the "employed" numbers.

Also the number no longer seeking any employment at all, are not counted as unemployed and those who unemployment benefits (limited as they are) are finished are not included in the unemployed numbers as well.

The number of unemployed people totaled 1.80 million, up 40,000 from the previous month, according to the seasonally adjusted data.

Those who voluntarily left their jobs stood at 790,000, up 8.2 percent from the previous month, while the number of new job seekers remained flat from the previous month at 460,000.

If there are 1.80 unemployed, these are the numbers of people more than likely receiving unemployment benefits and they are REQUIRED to be seeking work to collect the insurance payments. So, the actual number of people seeking work is well over 460,000, which is probably the number of "new" applicants to Hello Work.

Also those who have supposedly "voluntarily" left their jobs could be read as not getting offered a new contract, quit or be fired, and any number of other reasons as well.

The data provided in this article is cherry picked, inconclusive and another obfuscation of the reality of the working/employment/unemployment conditions here.

On an unadjusted basis, the number of people working in health care and welfare services stood at 9.45 million, up 5.1 percent from a year earlier

Interesting development, a lot of people felt pressured to abandon their work on health care thanks to the impossible hours and low wages (and the frequent discrimination they suffered from ignorant people that considered doctors and nurses sources of infection). It is positive that this trend is reversed, hopefully because the stress and pressure have been reduced...

Consider the non-permanent workers and part-time workers into employment statistics = No more unemployment.

Consider the non-permanent workers and part-time workers into employment statistics = No more unemployment.

Read my post, these folks you refer to here are not included in the unemployment numbers, but are considered gainfully employed.

In other words, the are working.

Anywhere that offers your less than 550 000yen a month is not even worth considering unless you want to starve or leave like a bun on the street.

Tokyo-centric posting once again!

This is the reason why there are jobs available but no one wants them.

This is true all over the country.

I spend at least 150 000 yen a moth for groceries for 2 nothing extravagant so imagine those people with 1000 yen hourly wage. Government should do something about it.

This much for groceries for one person? Dude you are living extremely extravagant and come across as arrogant with what you write here.

You really have no idea how the rest of Japan lives. There are many singles living alone on what you pay for groceries.

The labor market remains too tight. People and the economy would actually be better off if it rose to around 5%, to allow people time for training and certification acquisition.

Keeping everyone on the treadmill all the time is a dumb govt policy that suppresses wages and private demand.

Agree with Yubaru (above); out in the rural provinces, away from the urban areas, the majority of low-wage workers are subsisting on much less than 15万 per month budgeted for food...