Japan's government needs to employ more people in the public sector to cushion the impact of major economic reforms promised by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, an economics minister said yesterday.
"I think drastic employment measures need to be included" in a three-step program for implementing Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's structural reforms, said Heizo Takenaka, state minister for economic and fiscal policy. Koizumi's program is due to be presented later this month.
"As the employment situation is to get severer, I think we would need a new-type of public employment, in which the government would hire people directly" rather than relying on private firms to employ more staff, Takenaka said.
"The prime minister said of a plan to hire 50,000 assistant school teachers ... and this is an example of the new direct public employment," Takenaka told a discussion broadcast by the Japan Broadcasting Corp.
His remarks come a day after the Asahi Shimbun reported that support for Koizumi's cabinet had fallen amid growing fears of job losses that could accompany the structural reforms.
A poll of 2,183 adults conducted by the daily found that the approval rating for the cabinet had fallen to 69 percent from 77 percent in a survey carried out before last weekend's upper-house elections.
Koizumi's ruling coalition scored a solid victory in the July 29 polls but people are becoming more wary of the reforms, the Asahi said.
The number of people saying they do not support Koizumi rose from nine percent to 17 percent, of whom more than 40 percent cited economic and employment policies as reasons for their disapproval.
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