Japan’s unemployment rate rose to an all-time high last month, deflation intensified and families cut spending — a triple dose of bad news for Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso as his party heads for almost certain defeat in tomorrow’s parliamentary elections.
The jobless rate hit a seasonally adjusted 5.7 percent, the highest level in Japan’s post-World War II era and worsening from 5.4 percent in June, the government said yesterday.
The previous record was 5.5 percent, last hit in April 2003.
Prices fell sharply amid the labor market worries. Japan’s key consumer price index, which excludes volatile fresh food prices, tumbled a record 2.2 percent last month from a year earlier, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.
The figures come just two days before the country holds lower elections, widely seen as a referendum on the ruling party’s handling of the economy.
Recent polls predict that the Liberal Democratic Party, in power for most of the last half-century, is headed toward a historic drubbing at the hands of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ).
DPJ officials were quick to use the latest jobless figures as political ammunition.
“Although the ruling bloc claimed that ‘the economy has rebounded,’ [the nation’s] weak economic structure dependent on external demand has not changed,” Tetsuro Fukuyama, a DPJ senior official, was quoted by Kyodo news agency as saying.
“It is necessary to swiftly realize the domestic demand-led economic measures we are advocating,” Fukuyama said.
Under a mantra of “Putting People’s Lives First,” the Democrats are offering a platform heavy on social welfare initiatives, including cash handouts for job seekers in training and families with children.
The government’s chief spokesman, Takeo Kawamura, defended Aso’s policies, pointing to economic growth Japan recorded in the second quarter after a yearlong recession.
“There is no denying the fact that the economy is improving overall,” he said at a news conference, according to Kyodo.
The world’s No. 2 economy expanded at an annual pace of 3.7 percent in the April-June quarter. But economists note that exports served as the main driver of growth and that domestic demand remains fragile.
A separate government report showed that families are scaling back their spending. Average household spending, a key barometer of individual consumption, last month declined 2 percent from a year earlier.
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