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Japan


  • 20-December-2018

    English

    Working Better with Age: Japan

    Currently, Japan has the highest old-age dependency ratio of all OECD countries, with a ratio in 2017 of over 50 persons aged 65 and above for every 100 persons aged 20 to 64. This ratio is projected to rise to 79 per hundred in 2050. The rapid population ageing in Japan is a major challenge for achieving further increases in living standards and ensuring the financial sustainability of public social expenditure. However, with the right policies in place, there is an opportunity to cope with this challenge by extending working lives and making better use of older workers' knowledge and skills. This report investigates policy issues and discusses actions to retain and incentivise the elderly to work more by further reforming retirement policies and seniority-wages, investing in skills to improve productivity and keeping up with labour market changes through training policy, and ensuring good working conditions for better health with tackling long-hours working culture.

  • 29-May-2017

    English

    Investing in Youth: Japan

    The present report on Japan is the seventh report in the Investing in Youth series. In three statistical chapters, the report provides an overview of the labour market situation of young people in Japan, presents a portrait of young people who are not in employment, education or training (the NEETs) and analyses the income situation of young people in Japan. Two policy chapters provide recommendations on how Japan can improve the school-to-work transition of disadvantaged young people, and on how employment, social and training programmes can help the NEETs find their way back into education or work. Earlier reviews in the same series have looked at youth policies in Brazil (2014), Latvia and Tunisia (2015), Australia, Lithuania and Sweden (2016).

  • 11-April-2016

    English

    Japan: Boosting Growth and Well-being in an Ageing Society

    With 25 years of sluggish economic growth, Japan’s per capita income has fallen from a level matching the average of the top half of OECD countries in the early 1990s to 14% below that today. Weak growth, together with rapid population ageing, has driven public debt into uncharted territory. Revitalising growth is thus the top priority for the Japanese government. With the labour force shrinking more rapidly than the population, per capita output can only grow through improvements in labour productivity and labour force participation. Japan’s highly-skilled labour force and its technological leadership can help close the gap with leading OECD countries in per capita income. But broad-based structural reforms, as envisaged in the third arrow of Abenomics, are needed to allow these strengths to fully achieve their potential. The initial impact of Abenomics in 2013 was impressive, and the reform process needs to continue.
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  • 15-September-2015

    English

    Achieving fiscal consolidation while promoting social cohesion in Japan

    With gross government debt of 226% of GDP, Japan’s fiscal situation is in uncharted territory and puts the economy at risk. Japan needs a detailed and credible fiscal consolidation plan, including specific revenue increases and measures to control spending to restore its fiscal sustainability.

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  • 10-June-2015

    English, PDF, 355kb

    Japan Policy Brief: Greater Gender Equality for More Inclusive Growth

    To achieve greater gender equality in employment and more inclusive growth, Japan needs to change the workplace culture and ensure that the tax and social security systems do not reduce work incentives for second earners in households.

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  • 19-January-2015

    English

    Back to Work: Japan - Improving the Re-employment Prospects of Displaced Workers

    Job displacement (involuntary job loss due to firm closure or downsizing) affects many workers over the course of their working lives. Displaced workers may face long periods of unemployment and, even when they find new jobs, tend to be paid less and have fewer benefits than in the jobs they held prior to displacement. Helping displaced workers get back into good jobs quickly should be a key goal of labour market policy. This report is the second in a series of reports looking at how this challenge is being tackled in a number of OECD countries. It shows that Japanese employers and the government go to considerable lengths to avoid the displacement of regular workers while also providing considerable income and re-employment support to many of the workers whose jobs cannot be preserved. Challenges for labour market programmes include expanding labour market mobility between regular jobs, improving co-ordination between private and public re-employment assistance for displaced workers, and avoiding that job displacement pushes older workers to the margins of the labour market.

  • 31-March-2014

    English

    Japan: Closing the gender gap can boost the economy

    Reconciling work and family commitments is a challenge in every country, but particularly for Japanese men and women. Much more so than in most other OECD countries, men and women have to choose between babies and bosses: men choose bosses, women less so, but on the whole there are very few babies and there is too little female employment. These shortcomings are increasingly coming to the fore and will have to be addressed.

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  • 13-September-2011

    English

    Japan: Education reform

    While Japan has achieved outstanding scores on the PISA exams, further improving educational outcomes is important to sustain growth in the face of rapid population ageing.

    Related Documents
    • Economic Survey of Japan 2011

  • 13-September-2011

    English

    Japan: Labour market reforms to improve growth and equity

    Traditional Japanese labour market practices, which benefited both workers and firms during the high-growth era, are no longer appropriate in the context of slow economic growth and rapid population ageing.

    Related Documents
    • Economic Survey of Japan 2011

  • 1-December-2009

    English

    Southeast Asia Regional Policy Network on Education and Skills

    The rapidly developing Southeast Asia region is confronted with significant labour market challenges. This initiative aims to address the issues of employment and skills, especially through an interaction platform for members.

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