Japan’s non-regular employees, which includes temporary workers, dispatch workers, contractors, part-time workers and others, totalled 20.87 million for the month of November 2021, down 1.7% over the year according to data from Statistics Japan.

The number of ‘dispatched workers from temporary labour agencies’ increased by 2.8% over the year to a total of 1.45 million while the number of temporary workers overall decreased by 2.4% to 4.51 million.

Statistics Japan also published labour market data that showed the unemployment rate stood at 2.8% on a seasonally adjusted basis. This was a slight increase of 0.1% when compared to the previous month.

On a non-seasonally adjusted basis, the unemployment rate stood at 2.7%, down 0.1% from the previous year and unchanged from the previous month.

The labour force participation rate stood at 62.0%, down 0.3% compared to the previous year.

The number of employed persons in October totaled 66.50 million, down 0.8% compared to the previous year.

By sector, the information and communications sector saw the biggest increase in employment (9.3% over the year) while the living-related and personal services and amusement services sector saw a decline of 10.5% over the year.

Meanwhile, when it comes to job availability the jobs-to-applicants ratio was 1.15, meaning there were 115 job openings for every 100 jobseekers. This was unchanged from the previous month.