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Which industries employ the most workers in Japan? |
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As of 1996, 64.9 million Japanese were in the work force, with 59% of them being male. Roughly a third of women with paying jobs worked part-time. The service sector was the biggest employer, with 24.6% of all workers on its payroll. It was followed by the wholesale, retail, and restaurant industries (22.5%), and manufacturing (22.3%). The picture has changed dramatically since 1960. Then, agriculture was the largest employer, accounting for 30.0% of all jobs; now it provides just 5%. The number of people in services, meanwhile, doubled from the 12.0% of 35 years earlier. The sluggish economy over the past few years has been responsible for pushing the unemployment rate to a postwar high of 3.4% in 1996. For most of the period following World War II, it had remained between 1% and 2%.
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| Britain | United States | France | Germany | Japan |
| 43.9% | 46.1% | 45.2% | 42.8% | 40.5% |
| (1996) | (1996) | (1995) | (1996) | (1996) |
| Britain | United States | France | Germany | Japan |
| 43.4 | 41.6 | 38.7 | 37.4 | 43.3 |
| (1994) | (1995) | (1994) | (1996) | (1996) |
| Britain | United States | France | Germany | Japan |
| 7.1% | 4.9% | 12.4% | 9.7% | 3.4% |
Source: Ministry of Labor.
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