Japan Jobless Rate Falls Below 5%

Japan’s jobless rate fell below 5 percent in January for the first time in nearly a year and job availability rose, in a sign steady improvements in exports and output are spreading to other sectors of the economy.

But analysts expect the recovery in job conditions to remain slow in the coming months as companies are still far from operating at full capacity in the face of feeble domestic demand.

“Exports and industrial production have been improving so unemployment has fallen as a result of that, and I expect this to continue for the first half of this year,” said Hiromichi Shirakawa, chief Japan economist at Credit Suisse.

“But I don’t expect the trend to continue past mid-year. I can’t see domestic demand improving markedly, so I don’t see substantial falls in unemployment either.”

NYTimes

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