Realization of affluent living through improved quality of employment, an issue raised by the White Paper on Labour Economy 2004

In September, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare released a White Paper on the Labour Economy. The White Paper's sub-theme is "Challenges facing the realization of an affluent life through improved quality of employment." It analyzes issues such as the changes in economic society and the current employment status, the current status of the lives of the working people, and changes in the awareness of working people and their motivation to work, and explores measures to realize this goal.

The White Paper points out that an important task for Japan to become a more affluent country is to enhance the quality of employment so that workers can find their jobs rewarding and challenging, and can in turn enhance their ability to create added value.

While focusing on the issue of unemployment of youths and middle aged and older workers, which is becoming increasingly serious, the White Paper discusses the realization of an affluent life through improved quality of employment; and to do this, it calls on active efforts to (1) enable workers to enhance their vocational skills and capabilities to cope with what is an increasingly sophisticated and high value-added industrial structure, (2) increase their motivation for work itself, and (3) build and strengthen the social infrastructure to demonstrate their motivations and skills/capabilities.

Regarding the enhancement of the quality of employment, the White Paper discusses the tasks facing corporate employment management, and stresses that labor-management discussions at the workplace will play an increasingly important role.

The release of this White Paper led to immediate and excited media coverage; they announced that the White Paper estimated the number of "freeters" at 2.17 million in 2003, and, of the non-labor force population, the number of non-working individuals between the ages of 15 and 34 (unmarried school graduates who neither help with the housework nor attend school) at 520,000. In other words, interest was focused on the emergence of a large number of youths uninterested in working. The Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare Chikara Sakaguchi was reported to have commented that there actually may be around 1 million non-workers.

Much of what the White Paper reveals in its analysis of the present status overlaps what we at JLF have been pointing out in many of our past issues. The fact is that the problems facing Japan's economic and labor conditions have already been to a large extent identified. How should we overcome these problems? How can the proposals made in the White Paper be realized?

What Japan now needs is a prescription that is suited to the strengths (problem-solving skills and capabilities) of today's Japanese working people as well as the youths who will form tomorrow's working population.