Review of Japanese Data, Policies and Outcomes on Unemployment – Why has Japan been shifting from "Low Unemployment Society " to " High Unemployment Society"?

The employment and unemployment conditions in our country began to worsen in the early 1990s after the collapse of bubble economy. And now, Japan has been facing more difficult phase due to the delay in full-scale economic recovery, in particular, the bankruptcies of major companies such as security firms and financial institutions from 1997, and the development of full-blown restructuring accompanied by large-scale reduction or adjustment of employment. While involuntary departure from the employment by the middle-aged white-collar workers, among others, are getting more and more serious, there is a heightened pressure on the supply of the other family members including the spouses to the labor market, which reached the point where the insecurity toward employment or unemployment is no longer limited to the heads of the households but has been outreaching all the hierarchy. This makes today's employment and unemployment issues in our nation further severer. Many advanced countries began to fall into the structural recession since th