Employment Sharing in Japan

Except for several years immediately following the Second World War, unemployment has seldom posed a serious threat to the economic policy-makers in Japan. The annual rate of unemployment has consistently registered a markedly low, ‘super-full-employmentx2019; figure. The published unemployment statistics have never exceeded 3 per cent; if anything, they were kept below 1 percentage point during the phase of rapid economic growth in the 1960s (Table 15.1). The rising unemployment in the 1974 recession, eventually exceeding the 3 per cent level, may therefore mark the beginning of a new era in the Japanese economy.