Unemployment in Japan by Region

While looking for something else on the web, I stumbled across this page on unemployment in Japan, by region, as of 2007.

unemployment japan

Best Prefectures:
Shimane: 4.1%
Toyama, Nagano: 4.3%
Shizuoka, Fukui, Tottori: 4.4%
Aichi: 4.5%
Niigata: 4.7%

Worst Prefectures:
Okinawa: 11.8%
Kochi, Osaka: 8.6%
Aomori: 8.5%
Tokushima: 7.4%
Fukuoka: 7.5%
Nara: 7.0%

I’m not that surprised that unemployment in Okinawa, Kyushu and Shikoku is bad. And I’m not surprised that manufacturing centers such as Aichi and Shizuoka have very high employment. But I’m surprised that places such as Shimane and Tottori have such full employment — what is the economy out there?

24 thoughts on “Unemployment in Japan by Region”

  1. At a guess, because all the people who can’t get work in places like Shimane move to places where they can get work. Note how the dark blue prefectures are the Japan Sea ‘back of Japan’ ones in general, but reasonably close to the main centres. This is also suggestive of ease of labour movement, though no more than suggestive.

  2. So, Okinawa is just so awesome that even unemployed people don’t want to move away? I find that strangely believable.

  3. And I wonder how many of those employed have their jobs tied to the presence of tens of thousands of US military personnel.

  4. Having lived in Shimane (18 months, in the capital city of Matsue) I can attest to what Jade Oc says. It’s a place with old people and young families, and very little in between. Most young people from the region move away to find work, so if you were to do a count of those who are able to work in comparison to those who are looking, it makes sense they rank pretty high. After all, the majority of the population that remains is either beyond employment or not of employment survey age; spending their time photographing fireflies in their retirement or whittling their days away in a nursing home. Come to think of it, maybe the need for 介護 workers is padding the stats…

    That said, I think the numbers are rigged; the perception of high employment on the Japan Sea coast, especially in such remote places as Shimane and Tottori, has a lot to do with the number of “private companies” (aka fisherman, farmers, and other private/small businesses) that have been established that allow people to mis that the area is relatively poor and disadvantaged, especially in comparison into prefectures that border Tokyo/Osaka. Outside of the public sector, there is only a very basic service/retail infrastructure, a small regional tourist economy and the agrarian bits to balance the whole thing out.

    While people who remain are employed, I would suspect that if you had a map out the income earned next to that you’d get a better picture of the situation. I’m still in communication with friends on the wet side of the country, and it sounds worse there now than ever. You would figure if those bits were such a success why it was Tokyo wasn’t copying them by now.

  5. Interesting fact map. I am not certain either what is in Shimane and Tottori. I spend a lot of time in Tochig which is very close to Tokyo on the north side. It has relatively low unemployment which I am not surprised being so close to Tokyo and with a lot of industry and tourism related to Nikko and Nasu.

  6. “But I’m surprised that places such as Shimane and Tottori have such full employment—what is the economy out there?”

    Old dudes sucking their teeth. Seriously. It is not hard to find employment when you are the only person under 60 in your village.

  7. “Okinawa is just so awesome that even unemployed people don’t want to move away?”

    Or too remote to do so easily. You can’t just hop on a train.

    Bryce is a bit rude about places like Tottori. The economic mainstay of Tottori is people getting photographed on camels pretending they are in Arabia. That is, the people pretend they are in Arabia. The camels pretend they are in Persia.

  8. “That said, I think the numbers are rigged; the perception of high employment on the Japan Sea coast, especially in such remote places as Shimane and Tottori, has a lot to do with the number of “private companies” (aka fisherman, farmers, and other private/small businesses) that have been established that allow people to mis that the area is relatively poor and disadvantaged,”

    This raises the thorny question of how do you define “employment” for farmers, fishermen, etc. who aren’t in the employ of a larger company, particularly when the work is highly seasonal.

  9. We also need to clarify how employment is defined anyway: the relationship between mushoku and shitsugyousha, that sort of thing. I’d also like to see that map by municipality, not prefecture, as that disguises too much. For example, what’s the bet Hyogo has some pretty significant differences between the Kobe side and the Japan Sea coast side?

    I actually live in one of those dark blue prefectures on the soggy side of the country, but it’s one of the richer ones–at least the city I live in is. No major issue of young people moving away I can detect, but I haven’t checked the official stats. Regional towns and villages though are hollowing out, despite the best efforts of the government to waste my tax by building white elephants to stimulate the local LDP voters.

  10. The methodology of any survey should explain how the figures were collected and analysed, thus allowing evaluation and criticism.

    There are international standards for measuring employment. These allow for comparison between countries.

    Unemployment can vary dramatically within a fairly small region. Taking London (UK) as an example, there are three of the richest boroughs in the UK in London, and there are also three of the poorest within a few miles radius.

    A similar situation no doubt exists within Japanese prefectures and cities.

    I have not yet seen in Japan the kind of miserable dereliction common in various UK cities such as Liverpool. Perhaps I just don’t visit the ‘right’ palces.

  11. “I wonder how many of those employed have their jobs tied to the presence of tens of thousands of US military personnel.”

    I’ve seen numbers suggesting that it is about 15,000 (including people who work in clubs with mainly US clients, etc.) but couldn’t find them again. It is a lot, but the counter-argument to dependence is that if the US troops were gone – prime tourism real estate would be free, more people would come, and the employment figures would balance out.

  12. “if the US troops were gone”

    If the troops were gone Okinawa could declare independence and set itself up as the ultimate Japanese tax haven. And they could declare The Boom’s “Shimauta” the national anthem, put Mr. Miyagi on their currency, and install rock n roll upper house member Shokichi Kina as King.

    http://www.champloose.co.jp/index.html

    Obviously this would resolve the unemployment situation overnight as everyone takes up the jamisen and starts an Okinawa-rock fusion band

  13. RMilner Says:
    “I have not yet seen in Japan the kind of miserable dereliction common in various UK cities such as Liverpool. Perhaps I just don’t visit the ‘right’ palces.”

    i havn’t seen it either. but isn’t it typical for Japan that segregation between richer and poorer people is not so obvious.
    in Mitaka (one of the Tokyo suburbs) many neighborhoods have small villas, apartment blocks, small businesses (even light industry) mixed together, no clear lines separating social groups.

  14. I havent been to liverpool, but parts of rural Japan can be pretty desolate- a drive through rural Gunma and Tochigi is a tour of many untended fields, rusted-out houses, and closed shopping districts that no one even bothered to dismantle.

  15. “a drive through rural Gunma and Tochigi is a tour of many untended fields, rusted-out houses, and closed shopping districts that no one even bothered to dismantle.”

    I think that the big difference is that there aren’t many people living in those dilapidated areas as Japan is experiencing two concurrent trends – a second wave of migration from rural areas to cities and the abandonment of inherited property in the sticks.

    A lot of the decay in the US tends to be urban and it also tends to be occupied by squatters. I’ve seen NGO stats that place the number of homeless in Japan at 30,000 (the government stat is down around 24,000) and the number of homeless just in LA at 50,000 – the number nation-wide is thought to have topped 1,000,000 lately. Just saw a figure that Germany has over 800,000 homeless!?

  16. The average 失業保険 unemployment insurance might last six months after being terminated. Then there are the people who didn’t know how to properly exit their company resulting in just one or two months of unemployment insurance pay. I think that is how they get these figures; the amount of people on gov’t insurance support.

    Once their insurance term is over, even if they still are unemployed, they fall off the statistic. The true numbers must be a lot higher.

  17. “The true numbers must be a lot higher.”

    Indeed. Of course, I have always been entertained at how unemployment figures often drop people who have given up looking for work out of pure despair.

  18. “I havent been to liverpool, but parts of rural Japan can be pretty desolate- a drive through rural Gunma and Tochigi is a tour of many untended fields, rusted-out houses, and closed shopping districts that no one even bothered to dismantle.”

    That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about. Boarded up shops, burnt-out businesses and in some places, bomb sites still empty after WW2. London isn’t as bad as that, but some areas are getting that way.

    Most British cities have rich and poor people living close to each other. Kensington and Chelsea (the richest borough in the UK) has some social housing estates.

    I have seen the blue plastic coated boxes of the homeless in Tokyo. I haven’t been aware of boarded up shop fronts. I suppose a lot of them are fairly remote haikyo. Even so, I feel that Japan has been cruising on the momentum of the boom years for well over a decade, and the mpney is starting to run out.

  19. “haven’t been aware of boarded up shop fronts.”

    Not boarded up as such, just shuttered. And I have seen quite a few. However there is also the change from downtown shoutengai shopping to suburban big-box shopping to factor in there.

    Not sure about cruising on the money – isn’t the whole point of a bubble that there is no actual money, just expectations of it? And it bursts when people start demanding to be shown the money.

  20. “and the mpney is starting to run out.”

    I think that one of Japan’s major problems is not a lack of money, but billions and billions tied up in unproductive real estate, low interest accounts, or under the mattress. This money is not being put to use to support new ventures and it is not being thrown around to drive consumption, a potential engine of growth. A few recent books published in Japanese about this hidden wealth, and while they differ on the amount, most have similar hopes for its eventual productive use.

  21. M-Bone,

    We better hope that all those assets haven’t been securitized, hypothecated, and otherwise found their way into the hands of the LDP/yakuza/inagawa-kai/Citigroup/GS masters of the universe.

  22. “LDP/yakuza/inagawa-kai”

    Hey, it sure didn’t hurt in the 60s.

    Say what you want about the Yakuza – they know how to throw money around.

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