Japan may spend more than US$15 billion to protect jobs and help the unemployed amid its steepest economic downturn in decades, Japanese Labor Minister Yoichi Masuzoe said yesterday.
The plan could cover vocational training for job-seekers, subsidies to help companies save jobs and payments to help laid-off migrant workers or help them return to their home countries, according to reports quoting unnamed officials.
“We need to map out employment measures aggressively to the scale of ¥1.5 trillion [US$15.6 billion],” Masuzoe told reporters.
“People have concerns about what to live off while they are looking for the next job or while they are getting vocational training,” he said. “We want to present drastic measures to address this kind of problem.”
Asia’s largest economy is heading for its worst recession since World War II, and major auto, electronics and other companies have slashed tens of thousands of jobs, hitting temporary contract workers the hardest.
Toyota Motor Corp said yesterday it plans to halve recruitment of full-time workers in the next fiscal year starting next month to around 1,800 employees, while some other companies have cut or frozen new hiring.
Japan’s unemployment rate in January stood at 4.1 percent, still below its record of 5.5 percent in 2002, but is expected to rise as the global downturn bites deeper into Japan’s export industries.
The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry said last month that nearly 158,000 contract workers have or will have lost jobs by the end of this month.
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