Parity's Paradox -- Sign of Changed Times: Japan's Jobless Rate Rises to the U.S. Level --- At a Record 4.4%, Number Shows How Job Security Is Causing the Opposite --- Workdays Spent at the Zoo
Japan's floundering economy has crossed another humiliating milestone: Its official unemployment rate is as high as America's for the first time since Tokyo started keeping such statistics 45 years ago.</br></br>The Japanese government said Friday that its jobless rate, which averaged 2.5% in the 1980s, rose in November to a record 4.4% from 4.3% in October, matching the U.S. rate for the same period, announced a few weeks ago.</br></br>This once-unthinkable development -- reported in banner headlines in the Friday-evening editions of five national Japanese daily newspapers -- is the latest manifestation of a decade in which nearly everything has gone wrong for the Japanese economy and so much has gone right for the U.S. Japan is suffering its longest downturn since the country was reduced to rubble during World War II. The U.S. is enjoying the longest peacetime expansion in its history.</br></br>"The U.S. has always had a lot of unemployment; this is frightening," says Shuhei Oshima, a 26-year employee of an insurance agency in Tokyo. Says 48-year-old housewife Masako Torii, her eyes widening, "What's happening to all the things we believe in?" The bankruptcy of her husband's small printing company has forced her to seek full-time work, so far unsuccessfully, for the first time since she got married 25 years ago.</br></br>The fact that it has taken so long to bring the two jobless rates together testifies to the durability of Japan Inc.'s famous commitment to employment security. Despite severe economic distress, major Japanese companies still hesitate to cut workers. In contrast, U.S. companies from Polaroid Corp. on the East Coast to Northrop Grumman Corp. on the West Coast have announced major layoffs this month amid the strongest economy in a generation.