In snow country along the northwest coast of Honshu, a small manufacturer of precision molds is feeling the pain of China's economic slowdown. Orders have slowed to a trickle at Nagumo Seisakusho Co., a supplier to big auto-parts makers such as Denso Corp. and Aisin ...
It's a rite of spring: Major corporations hire fresh university graduates en masse every April, starting them all at the same salary with assurances of rising pay and lifetime employment. But lately, some companies, including Rakuten, SoftBank and Line Corp., are breaking with that tradition, ...
For years, retail currency investors were known as "Mrs. Watanabes," a reference to the metaphorical housewife who invests family savings mostly in foreign exchange. Now, a younger generation of women is looking at a wider asset range in which to park investments. Like their elders, ...
Most companies support loosening the country’s immigration system to cope with labor shortages, but they favor skilled workers, not an influx of unskilled laborers, a poll shows.
Kazuhiro Hasegawa has been driving a taxi in Tokyo for three years. It's a job he enjoys, despite 18-hour shifts. But recently, he said, it has not been enough to make ends meet. The ¥4.5 million to ¥4.8 million a year he makes from his primary ...
The public approval ratings of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe may have plunged to record lows amid scandals over suspected cronyism, but a Reuters poll shows the Japanese business community has a much more positive view of him. Out of 223 respondents, 73 percent wanted Abe ...
Japan's labor market is getting so tight that companies are starting to convert contract and part-time workers into full-time, regular employees to prevent them from leaving — a move that could lift wages and spending but squeeze profits. The trend is a reversal from the ...
Confidence among Japanese manufacturers receded in May for the first time in nine months after hitting a decade-high level April, a Reuters survey has found, showing guarded optimism in a nascent export-led economic recovery. The monthly poll — which tracks the Bank of Japan's key ...
In his presidential campaign last year, U.S. President Donald Trump promised to scrap trade deals that gave unfair advantages to other nations and replace them with new ones that would revitalize the U.S. economy and bring jobs back home. One of the Trump administration's first ...
A wave of startups is emerging in famously risk-averse Japan as cash-rich corporations increasingly delegate the task of keeping pace with technologies such as artificial intelligence and robotics to smaller, nimbler businesses. Japan has been dry ground for startups, given the shame that entrepreneurs and ...
