Japan’s unemployment rate declined to 3.5 per cent in May amid signs of economic recovery, the government said on Friday.
But unstable forms of employment remained one of the nation’s most pressing issues, analysts said.
The number of temporary and part-time workers jumped by 300,000 from a year earlier to 19.21 million, while that of regular employees grew by only 10,000 to 33.24 million, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications said.
The proportion of such non-regular employees in the labour force hit a record high of 36.7 per cent in 2013 for the fifth straight year of rise, compared with 26 per cent in 2000, a government report showed.
The ministry also reported on Friday that the income of Japanese workers’ households dropped 4.6 per cent from a year earlier to ¥421,117 ($4,128) in May for the eighth consecutive month of fall despite reported pay raises at big companies.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare reported that the availability of jobs — measured as the ratio of job offers per job seeker — inched up to 1.09 in May from the previous month, the highest in 22 years.