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Japan's jobless rate fails to drop despite recovery

Hovering at 5 percent or higher for a year, Japan's unemployment rate held steady at 5.4 percent in June and fanned fears the nascent economic recovery won't be enough to absorb the streams of hopeful jobseekers in the months ahead.

Although this nation's downturn bottomed out earlier this year, companies are still relying on overtime with workers they already have to ride out a rebound that is heavily dependent on rising production and surging exports, the government said yesterday.

Many people who had given up looking for jobs and dropped out of the work force are expected to start job-hunting again, but whether they have the qualifications required for new jobs remains dubious, said Masato Chino, director of the government Labor Force Statistics Office.

"It's not clear whether they will join the ranks of the employed or the unemployed," he said. "The trend is not yet clear."

Among the nearly 41 million people who are now statistically outside the work force, 9.23 million want to work or plan to start looking for work soon, according to Tuesday's data.

The unemployment rate in Japan hit a record 5.5 percent in December -- the highest since the government began keeping such records in 1953. It stood at 5.4 percent in May.

In June, 3.68 million people were unemployed, up 300,000 from the same month last year. Those without jobs edged up a seasonally adjusted 30,000 in June from May, but the unemployment rate stayed the same because the labor force grew by a seasonal 210,000 people.
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