The Challenge before Japan’s new PM

Dr. Jassim Taqui

DG Al-Bab Institute for Strategic Studies

Islamabad, October 10,  2021: If Japan's new Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, hopes to win over voters ahead of elections at the end of the month, he will need to convince them that he can heal his country's pandemic-battered economy. Before Kishida took office on Monday, 66% of Japanese adults said it was a bad time to find a job where they lived, and nearly half (47%) said economic conditions were getting worse in their local area.

These latest data come from Gallup's World Poll survey conducted in mid-June through mid-August, as Japan continued to struggle to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. Japan had already been contending with slow economic growth for years before the pandemic and suffered some of worst declines during it.

The pessimism that Japanese adults currently feel about their job market reflects that situation and is a drastic departure from the cautious optimism they expressed in the years immediately preceding the pandemic. In 2019, nearly half (46%) of Japanese adults said it was a good time to find a job where they lived, while 33% said it was a bad time. The Japanese public's views on their local job markets darkened during the pandemic, with 14% saying it was a good time to find a job and 74% reporting it was a bad time in 2020.

The current 18% who now say it is a good time to find a job and the 66% indicating it is a bad time is only a modest improvement and well below levels of most of the past decade. Japanese pessimism on local job markets reflects that in 2020, the country's economy had the lowest ratio of available jobs to applicants in nearly 50 years.