Japan’s non-regular employees, which includes temporary workers, dispatch workers, contractors, part-time workers and others, totalled 20.70 million in April 2022, up 1.0% when compared to the same period a year ago, according to data from Statistics Japan.

The number of ‘dispatched workers from temporary labour agencies’ reported an increase of 5.6% over the year and stood at a total of 1.50 million while the number of temporary workers overall increased by 4.3% to 4.33 million.

Statistics Japan also published labour market data that showed the unemployment rate stood at 2.7% on a non-seasonally adjusted basis. This was down 0.3% when compared to the previous year.

On a seasonally adjusted basis, the unemployment rate stood at 2.5%, down 0.1% over the month.

Japan’s labour force participation rate stood at 62.6%, up 0.4% compared to the previous year.

The number of employed persons in April 2022 totalled 67.38 million, down 0.4% compared to the previous year.

By sector, the information and communications sector reported an increase of 7.7% over the year. On the other hand, the agriculture and forestry sector reported a decrease of 8.4%.

Japan’s job availability ratio improved to 1.23 from 1.22 in the previous month which means there were 123 job openings for every 100 job seekers.