Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare announced today that the number of jobs in Japan in 2021 has fallen for the third consecutive year as Japanese companies continue to suffer from the COVID-19 outbreak. This has resulted in continuously fewer new job openings.
The job vacancy rate was 1.13 in 2021, a decrease of 0.05 percentage points from 2020, after falling 0.42 in 2019.
The number of job seekers increased by 6.6% to 1.9 million in 2021, while the number of job vacancies rose by only 1.6% to 2.2 million.
Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications reported that Japan’s unemployment rate in 2021 was 2.8%, unchanged from 2020, which is higher than the 2.4% unemployment rate seen in the pre-pandemic period in 2019.
In December, the jobs-to-applications ratio rose to 1.16 from 1.15 in November, while the unemployment rate fell to 2.7% in December from 2.8% in November.