— See Separate Table For Details of Individual Forecasts
TOKYO (MNI) – Japan’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate is
expected to be at 4.7% in May, unchanged from April, while the ratio of
job offers to job seekers is projected to have fallen further to 0.60
from 0.61 in April, according to the median forecasts of analysts
surveyed by Market News International.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications will release
the unemployment rate while the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare
will release the ratio of job offers to job seekers, both at 0830 JST on
Friday, July 1 (2330 GMT Thursday).
The ratio of job offers to job seekers at government placement
offices, which is sensitive to overall economic conditions, is expected
to have declined in May to the lowest level since December 2010, when it
stood at 0.58 (only 58 job offers for every 100 job seekers).
“The job market has been gradually worsening, due to falls in sales
caused by (the March 11) earthquake,” said Yoshiki Shinke, senior
economist at Dai-Ichi Life Research Institute.
But looking ahead, Akira Maekawa, senior economist at Global
Futures and Forex, expects a rebound in industrial output to support the
labor market, which had been gradually improving until early this year.
“The unemployment rate will start to decline in the second half of
this fiscal year,” he said.
The government has said that it is compiling employment and
unemployment data for March and onward without records from the Iwate,
Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures, the hardest hit by the earthquake and
tsunami that wrecked the northeastern Pacific coast.
For the time being, the government will release only national data
minus the three prefectures from the monthly Labour Force survey.
skodama@marketnews.com
** Market News International Tokyo Newsroom: 81-3-5403-4838 **
[TOPICS: M$J$$$,M$A$$$,MAJDS$]