Japan’s headline unemployment data doesn’t tell the full story of its jobless pain.
Figures from the statistics bureau last week showed the unemployment rate ticked up to just 2.6 percent in April, a figure of envy for other countries as jobless rates rocket around the world amid the pandemic. Problem is, the numbers don’t include an extra 4.2 million people who are technically still attached to their employers but aren’t actually working and may not be getting full paychecks, if anything.
Factor in these people and the unemployment rate would jump to 11.5 percent. Then consider that another 940,000 people left the labor force in April and aren’t considered in the stats, either. Put it altogether and a grimmer jobs picture comes into focus that’s a little closer to what has hit the U.S. and other major economies.