LAYOFFS GENERATE HEADLINES, LEGISLATION

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 TOKYO 000174 SENSITIVE SIPDIS DOL FOR ILAB/SHEPARD PARIS FOR USOECD E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: ELAB ECON PGOV JA SUBJECT: LAYOFFS GENERATE HEADLINES, LEGISLATION Summary -------------- ¶1. (SBU) Company layoffs in Japan have become a staple of recent daily newspaper and television reporting despite relatively low unemployment numbers, especially in comparison with other parts of the world. Expectations the markets will continue to deteriorate, a perception vulnerable groups bear the brunt of the downturn, and gaps in the employment safety net are key factors behind the Japanese public's concerns. The government has developed a series of overlapping proposals to address labor issues, and two bills have been introduced in the Diet. One would expand some unemployment benefits to approximately 1.5 million of around 10 million ineligible workers; the other would partially reverse a liberalization effort that increased the flexibility of Japan's labor market. End summary. Headline Employment -------------- ¶2. (SBU) As Japan economy worsens, stories of companies cutting jobs have become a staple of daily newspaper headlines and television reporting. For all the news coverage, however, the labor market's numbers have been relatively benign compared to those in other countries. Unemployment in November reached 3.9 percent, a 0.2 percent uptick from October, but still lower than the four percent range in which it spent much of 2008. Moreover, unemployment is considerably lower than the 5.5 percent level it hit in June and August 2002, at the worst of Japan's post-bubble labor market. (Note: Japan defines an active search for work differently from the United States and includes military personnel in its total labor force calculation. Japan's unemployment rate has historically been lower than the United States. End note.) ¶3. (SBU) Several factors appear to be driving concerns about the labor market. First, there is an expectation unemployment will continue to rise, perhaps dramatically. Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare (MHLW) Labor Policy and Planning Director Masayuki Nagai told Emboffs the Ministry, in its planning, is using Cabinet Office projections that unemployment will average 4.7 percent during FY2009. The media, however, have reported MHLW Minister Yoichi Masuzoe told Ministry officials the rate may exceed 5.5 percent before the end of the recession -- which would be the worst unemployment in Japan's postwar period. Media also widely cite a credit research agency's survey in which one out of every four Japanese companies reports either having already cut jobs or plans to do so during the economic downturn. ¶4. (SBU) Second, there is a perception vulnerable groups are bearing the brunt of the downturn. Layoffs so far have been concentrated among part-time, contract, and dispatch workers, the 17.3 million so-called "non-regular" employees who comprise about 34 percent of the labor force. The proportion of non-regular workers in the workforce has grown significantly since 1985, when they constituted just 16.4 percent of employees. The GOJ estimates the economy will shed approximately 85,000 non-regular jobs between October 2008 and March 2009. ¶5. (SBU) Third, Japan's safety net is not serving non-regular workers well. Because basic safety net policies were built around the concept of lifetime employment, many of the non-regular workers who have been laid off do not qualify for unemployment benefits. (Current regulations only allow employees expected to stay with an employer for at least one year to even enroll in the unemployment insurance scheme.) Some workers also lost their housing, which is often provided or subsidized by a worker's company. ¶6. (SBU) These concerns seemed to coalesce around reports of TOKYO 00000174 002 OF 003 500 laid-off workers living in a tent city in a downtown Tokyo park. The images of people enduring the cold, in a park across from the stately Imperial Hotel and a few blocks from the Imperial Palace and the Diet, were particularly galling to the public because they appeared during the New Year's holiday, when most Japanese spend time in their hometowns enjoying their families. Policy Response -------------- ¶7. (SBU) Over the past nine months, government and party groups have developed a series of overlapping and sometimes contradictory employment proposals. Minister Masuzoe submitted a three-pronged "New Employment Strategy" to the cabinet-level Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy in April ¶2008. That initiative was followed in July by the Ministry's "Five Relief Plans" as part of the GOJ's "Immediate Policy Package to Enhance Social Security Functions." In August, MHLW contributed labor market measures to a "Comprehensive Immediate Policy Package to Ease Public Anxiety" about the labor market, which was then augmented in October by "Measures to Support Daily Life." In December, the Ministry crafted the employment security component of the "Emergency Policy Package for Protecting Daily Life," while the ruling coalition, in the same month, released a "New Employment Security Package." ¶8. (SBU) The proposals can best be described as taking a throw-in-the-kitchen-sink approach, with many simply re-treads of ideas floated since at least PM Abe's 2006 "Second Chance" initiative. Line items range from expanding "Hello Work" job centers targeted to women trying to re-enter the workforce after maternity leave to measures subsidizing employers that keep laid-off workers in corporate housing to strengthening career counseling for non-regular workers to supporting the "job card" system that documents work experience and training. The most cohesive of the strategies -- that released in December by the ruling coalition -- proposes a 2 trillion yen (approximately $20 billion) fund to support employment measures over the next three years, along with a 400 billion ($4 billion) job-creation fund. However, the proposal does not fully include measures to fund it, leaving more than $8.5 billion to be identified "from other revenue sources in a timely and appropriate manner." ¶9. (SBU) Many of the MHLW's proposals would be funded through the proposed first and second supplementary FY2008 budgets and the FY2009 budget. Only two pieces of labor legislation, however, have been submitted to the Diet. The first, which was submitted in November and carried over to the current session, proposes banning certain kinds of dispatch work, including dispatch from staffing companies for contracts under 30 days (with limited exceptions for specialist jobs such as interpreters). The second, which the ruling coalition submitted January 20, would strengthen the employment safety net for non-regular workers by easing the requirements for contributing to Japan's unemployment insurance scheme (by reducing the minimum expected employment eligibility requirement from a year to six months). The January 20 bill would also reduce the minimum required contribution period, temporarily extend unemployment benefits, lower the unemployment insurance premium, and extend and improve certain childcare benefits payments. The new provisions are projected to extend benefits to about 1.5 million of the approximately 10 million workers who are currently ineligible. Comment -------------- ¶10. (SBU) The easing of unemployment insurance requirements, along with enhancement of some benefits, is a small step toward addressing the long-standing problems of the two-tiered labor market split between "regular" and TOKYO 00000174 003 OF 003 "non-regular" workers. The same cannot be said, however, for the moves to ban some dispatch work, which is politically popular but reverses efforts to make Japan's labor market more flexible and able to weather economic changes. MHLW officials privately acknowledge how the 2004 liberalization of dispatch work increased the numbers of people working, but note as well that the quick dismissal of non-regular workers in the downturn has made the reform unpopular. Resigned to the politicization of the issue, MHLW officials could only shrug at the point that eliminating flexibility would lead to higher long-term unemployment. ZUMWALT