The unemployment rate climbed to 5.5 percent in November, setting a record high for the third consecutive month with job losses by middle-aged, full-time male workers showing a marked increase, the government announced Friday.

The seasonally adjusted jobless rate was 5.4 percent in October, 5.3 percent in September and 5 percent in both August and July.

"Employment has deteriorated for the third month in a row. It is a very severe situation," Health, Labor and Welfare Minister Chikara Sakaguchi told a news conference.

He said the government will seek swift and effective implementation of employment-stimulus steps that were covered in the first extra budget for the current fiscal year and will push harder for proposed work-sharing systems.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda said rising unemployment is "unavoidable to a certain extent" if it is a result of the government's structural reform policy.

The government will try to support workers who got the ax, while taking steps to ease fears of those concerned about their jobs, he said.

The Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications said in a preliminary report that for November, the jobless rate for male workers remained at a record high 5.8 percent, which it hit for the first time in October. The rate for female workers rose 0.1 percentage point to 4.9 percent.

The record jobless rate for female workers was the 5.2 percent hit in September.

A notable feature for November was the sharp increase in the number of jobless male workers aged 45 to 54, a rise of 130,000 from a year earlier to 440,000, said Masato Chino, director of the ministry's Labor Force Statistics Office.

Reflecting that fact, the number of jobless household heads increased by 180,000 to a record high 1.01 million, with their jobless rate also hitting a record high of 3.8 percent.

The figures are record highs for the second straight month. In October, the number of jobless household heads rose by 160,000 to 990,000, and their jobless rate to 3.7 percent.

On top of the prolonged recession, the impact of the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the United States and the mad cow disease scare here was felt further.

Unemployment rose in the transportation and telecommunications sector as tourism was hit, while bankruptcies of some "yakiniku" grilled meat restaurants as a result of the mad cow scare added to the jobless rolls, he said.

Separately, the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry said the ratio of job offers to job seekers in November dropped 0.02 point from the previous month to a seasonally adjusted 0.53, with job offers falling 1.7 percent and job seekers rising 1.2 percent.

The ratio means that for every 100 people seeking work in November, there were only 53 jobs available.

Among other figures, the public management ministry said the number of job holders in the reporting month fell 720,000 from a year earlier to 64.3 million, down for the eighth consecutive month.

Male workers with full-time jobs accounted for a large portion of the decline, the ministry said.

The number of people out of work rose 410,000 to 3.5 million, with those losing their jobs involuntarily from corporate restructuring and other factors climbing 290,000 to 1.23 million, up for the fourth straight month.

The number of people employed in the manufacturing sector fell for the seventh consecutive month, by 5 percent to 12.63 million. The construction industry workforce declined for the 12th month in a row, by 3 percent to 6.38 million, and in the transportation and communications industry the workforce shrank 6.2 percent to 3.93 million, down for the second straight month.

However, the workforce increased for the first time in four months in the wholesale, retail and restaurant sector, by 0.3 percent to 14.93 million.

Employment in the services industry rose by 2.3 percent to 17.94 million. It was the 21st consecutive month of increase in the sector, the ministry said.

Bankruptcy fallout

A total of 202,565 people lost their jobs due to corporate bankruptcies between January and November, with 23,549 jobs disappearing in November alone, a corporate credit research agency said Friday.

September was the worst month, when 27,291 people were let go, Tokyo Shoko Research Ltd. said.

The figures cover bankruptcies with liabilities of more than 10 million yen.

The number of jobs lost to bankruptcies could eclipse the record high of 211,291 in 1977, it said.

In November, 33.7 percent of the jobs that disappeared were in the manufacturing sector, 21.7 percent in the construction industry, 14.6 percent in the wholesale sector and 8.3 percent in the services industry.

The manufacturing sector lost 7,938 jobs, the highest monthly figure for the year, the agency said.

There were 1,813 bankruptcies in November, the second highest for that month since the war, leaving total debts of 1.87 trillion yen.

Of them, four stemmed from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States and 11 were the result of the mad cow scare.

Help for unemployed

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi on Friday pledged to take steps to support the unemployed while pushing on with structural reforms.

The nation's unemployment rate climbed to 5.5 percent in November.

"This is the biggest issue facing the Japanese economy at the moment," Koizumi told reporters at the Prime Minister's Official Residence when asked about the jobless rate, which rewrote the record high for the third straight month.

"We need to adopt a two-way strategy, that is, address the question of what we can do to help the unemployed . . . and the question of how to nurture markets and companies that can create new industries and jobs," he said. "We cannot loosen our hold on structural reforms.

"It is the task of reforms to create an environment in which those who lose jobs accept the situation positively and are able to feel they can find a new job or go through new training."