Record 53.2 Pct of Women Hold Jobs in Japan: Govt Survey

Jiji Press

11:06 JST, July 23, 2023

TOKYO (Jiji Press) — The employment rate for women in Japan reached a record high of 53.2% in 2022, up 2.5 percentage points from 2017, an internal affairs ministry survey showed Friday.

The survey also found that a record 85.2% of men and women rearing preschool children had jobs.

The figures suggest that shortened working hours and other systems to support child-rearing workers have increasingly been utilized, ministry officials said.

According to the quinquennial survey report, a record 67.06 million people held jobs as of Oct. 1 last year, with the number of women standing at 30,354,000, also an all-time high.

The employment rate for women, including the self-employed, between 25 and 39 came to 81.5%, exceeding 80% for the first time ever.

Although 148,000 people quit jobs for giving birth or raising children in the past year, the figure represented a decline of 67,000 from the previous survey.

Meanwhile, job separations for caregiving rose 7,000 to 106,000, with quits particularly increasing among people age 60 or over, indicating that more elderly people are caring for their parents or spouses.

The survey newly found that 12.65 million people, or 19.1% of all workers in the country, worked remotely at least once in the past year amid the COVID-19 crisis and work-style reform.

A closer observation showed that 6.54 million people teleworked for less than 20% of their total workdays in the year while 2.26 million others did for over 80%.

The telework rate was high in technical and administrative job categories, such as programmers.