Unemployment Rate

Japan's Unemployment Rate is the monthly share of unemployed people, those without work but available and seeking it, in the labour force. The labour force means all employed plus unemployed people aged 15+, counted by the Labour Force Survey. The Statistics Bureau of Japan has run it monthly since July 1947, using about 40,000 households.

It covers usual residents except foreign diplomatic and consular staff, their families, and foreign military personnel and their families. Monthly results come in the Basic Tabulation, and richer detail comes quarterly in the Detailed Tabulation. It does not count only Hello Work registrants. Discouraged non-seekers sit outside the labour force; 1 hour of paid work counts as employed.

Responses cover the reference week, the 7 days ending on the last day of each month, except 20 to 26 December. Basic monthly results come at 08:30 Japan time at the end of the next month, as a rule.

Each release shows the labour force, employment, hours, the unemployed by seeking reason, the rate and people outside the labour force. The adjusted rate leads month-to-month reading; the rate lags the openings ratio, and a lower rate means tighter markets.

The Detailed Tabulation comes 2 months after the final month of each quarter. It adds unemployment duration, reasons for non-regular work and underutilization gauges LU1 to LU4, including work below 35 hours a week. Past 10 years of adjusted data are revised each January, and population benchmarks are renewed every 5 years.

Hiring, job loss and exits from the labour force move it.

• Unemployed persons: people with no work who were available and sought work in the reference week.
• Reason for seeking a job: job loss from bankruptcy or restructuring, voluntary quits for personal reasons or newly started seeking.
• Age, sex and duration: unemployment by age and sex, plus how long people have sought work.
• Employment type, industry and hours: regular and non-regular work such as part-time and temporary jobs, by industry and weekly hours.
• People outside the labour force and underuse gauges: students, homemakers and discouraged seekers, plus quarterly LU1 to LU4.

In August 2020 the publisher counted 66.76 million employed, down 750,000 from a year earlier, and 2.06 million unemployed, up 490,000. It reported these figures on October 2, 2020.

The seasonally adjusted rate was 3.0% on a labour force of 68.82 million. Employment fell faster than unemployment rose, so the labour force shrank by about 260,000 as people left it entirely. The single 3.0% hid the larger job loss, so read employed and unemployed counts together.

1. Sample: Survey about 40,000 households in about 2,900 districts chosen by stratified 2-stage sampling, districts first then dwellings, covering about 100,000 people aged 15+. Districts stay 4 months, leave 8, then repeat those months next year; each month a quarter of districts and half of homes rotate.
2. Classification: Classify each person aged 15+ by reference-week activity as employed, unemployed or outside the labour force. Employed means 1 hour of paid work or unpaid family work, or a qualifying absence. Unemployed means no work plus availability plus seeking or business preparation.
3. Expansion: Scale results to Japan totals by ratio estimation, weighting sample counts to official population by sex, 15 age groups and 11 regions. Quarterly and annual averages are arithmetic means of monthly figures.
4. Rate: Divide unemployed persons by the labour force and multiply by 100. For example, 2.06 million divided by 68.82 million times 100 is about 3.0%.
5. Adjustment: Adjust the rate series directly with X-12-ARIMA, a seasonal adjustment program that removes regular seasonal patterns. Monthly releases use predicted seasonal factors, and the past 10 years are revised each January with 12 new months.