This is an op-ed—meaning it is the author's personal view—from The New York Times.
For nearly the last two decades, Japan has been held up as a cautionary tale, an object lesson on how not to run an advanced economy. After all, the island nation is the rising superpower that stumbled. And Western economists were scathing in their criticisms of Japanese policy.
The Japanese government wants women to work more and have more children, but it lacks concrete plans of how to do so. To begin with, there is a drastic need to increase government-funded care for children of all ages. In Japanese elementary schools, a lot of the activities and meetings fall in the middle of a weekday, and while public afterschool care does exist, in many places it is only for children up through third grade.
Every day, we use products that are built using “rare earths”—a group of 17 elements that are, as the name suggests, very rare. They’re used to make everyday items such as rechargeable batteries, LED lights and display panels, as well as larger products such as wind turbines.
Now, it turns out, Japan has an estimated 16 million tons of the stuff on its turf. Researchers claim the trove might be enough to supply the world with metals such as yttrium and europium on a “semi-infinite basis.”
Japan’s job market is the tightest it’s been in more than 40 years, giving leverage to labor unions pressing for bigger pay hikes at annual wage negotiations and raising prospects for higher consumer spending and inflation.
The jobs-to-applicants ratio rose to 1.59 in December from 1.56, the highest since January 1974, labor ministry data showed. That means there were nearly 1.6 jobs for every applicant.
A number of Japanese banks are set to launch a new national digital currency in a bid to wean citizens off cash, the Financial Times reports.
The FT says that a consortium led by Mizuho Financial Group and Japan Post Bank plan to launch the new digital currency in time for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
The new project, which has the support of Japan's central bank and regulators, aims to develop technology to allow Japanese people to pay for goods and services with their smartphone.
This lesson will focus on describing cause using a variety of expressions. The topic we will discuss today is the economy.
Faced with slack consumption and soul-searching over Japan’s notoriously poor work-life balance, the government is asking companies to allow their workers to leave at 3pm on the last Friday of the month.
The hope is that they will use those extra hours of freedom to shop, make an early start to their Friday libations or go on a weekend break.
In 2030, there will be more jobs than workers able to fill them in many of the world's largest economies, according to Boston Consulting Group senior partner Rainer Strack.
