気ままなリライト３５

日本の労働時間、コロナ後の回復鈍く　雇用維持を優先

The Japanese labor force has yet to get into a full swing. Without any effective measure to lift the country economy out of the recession, corporative efforts to survive on their own are focused on cutting labor costs by reducing their employees’ working hours or by replacing regular employees with part-time workers. A decrease in wages paid proportional to working hours is dampening consumer appetite, leading to the work force with shorter working hours for the production of goods and services in little demand.
 
The pandemic-related drop in sales has forced a broad range of industries to shorten the working hours of their employees. According to statistics on the labor force compiled by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, monthly working hours for the average worker decreased by 2 % from 138.8 in fiscal 2019 to 136 in fiscal 2021. A reduction of 4.2 hours in fiscal 2020 wasn’t covered by an increase of 1.4 hours in 2021. One-year average working hours decreased by 12 % in March 2022, from March 2020 in hospitality and food service industries while manufacturing and construction industries marked an only 2% decline.
 
What was prioritized as an economic measure to combat the pandemic crisis put working hours on a downward trend further than the pre-pandemic era in Japan. The Japanese government focused on how to arrange the amount of labor rather than how to expand the scope of business by providing the pandemic-plagued businesses with subsidies to secure the employment. Laborers retained their jobs at the expense of working hours. While Japan marked a 1.1 % decline in the amount of labor generated in the period between April and June 2022, compared with the period between October and December 2019, the U.S. recorded a 1.3 % increase.
 
A decline in working hours in Japan has had something to do with the demographic situation and the corporate culture specific to the country. A cap on overtime hours imposed by the government in April 2019 reduced the total working hours by about 20 % in fiscal 2021, compared with that in fiscal 1990. The expanding labor market for elderly people has been increasing the number of elderly part-time workers. The male-oriented corporate culture has been putting a child-rearing burden on working women’s shoulders, leading to the shrinking average working hours for working women. According to the OPEC’s data on annual working hours in various countries, compared with 100 in 2015 as a standard level, Japan marked 93.5 in 2021,92.9 in 2020 and 95.6 in 2019. The U.S. reached over 100 and Eurozone countries scored 97. The proportion of people working for 30 to 39 hours per week was smaller in Japan than that in France or German or the U.K. in 2021. Japan and those three countries were flipped in the proportion of people working for 1-29 hours per week.