TOKYO — Japan's unemployment rate reached a record high 5 percent last month, stirring fears of even harder times ahead and shattering this nation's myth that jobs should last a lifetime.
The jobless rate here has never hit the 5 percent level since the government began compiling such statistics in 1953. But the data, released Tuesday, underlined the serious troubles of this country's economy. Hit hard by the global downturn and plunging exports, Japan's companies are finally resorting to drastic work force reductions.
"It's hopeless. I'm wondering what I should do," said Kazuaki Asano, 54, who lost his job of 31 years at a trust bank.
Asano — who sent in nearly 30 applications and went to six job interviews with no luck — was going home disappointed Tuesday from a crowded employment-referral center in Tokyo, having found the job-search computers all taken up by milling job-hunters.
Japan has been inundated almost daily with news of job cuts at the biggest corporate names — companies that had long counted on loyalty and dedication from their workers in return for lifetime employment.
The global electronics slump is taking its toll as production stalls and exports shrink. Electronics companies Toshiba Corp., Fujitsu, NEC Corp. and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. have all slashed jobs recently.
Japan's leading business daily reported Tuesday that the nation's woes weren't caused by a merely temporary downturn but rooted in deep changes in manufacturing that are sending jobs overseas where labor is cheaper.
"The wave of globalization can't be stopped," the Nihon Keizai Shimbun said. "The unraveling of the lifetime employment system can't be turned back."
Fears are growing the worst is yet to come.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has promised to carry out economic reforms that are also sure to involve "pain" to ensure long-term recovery, such as cleaning up the massive bad debts at the nation's banks and privatizing the public sector.
Such moves threaten to send bankruptcies and jobless figures higher.
The number of jobless jumped by 230,000 in July from a year earlier to 3.3 million, the Ministry of Public Management said Tuesday. The number of people holding jobs in July fell by 370,000 from the same month last year to 64.52 million. In June, the jobless rate was at the previous record high of 4.9 percent.
Private research agency Teikoku Databank found earlier this year that workers thrown out on the streets from companies going bankrupt in the first six months of this year totaled about 84,000 people, up 15 percent from 73,000 for the same period last year.
Mitsuru Saito, chief economist at UFJ Capital Markets Securities Co. in Tokyo, urged Koizumi to stay firm and go forward with reforms to rid Japan of what Saito called three economic excesses — debts, equipment investments and jobs.
And the best the government can do is ease the growing pain with welfare programs, he said.
"The surgeon's hand holding the scalpel is starting to tremble," Saito said. "The Japanese economy needs radical surgery that will cause a lot of bloodshed."
Yukiharu Hogakiuchi, who works at a training program for the unemployed, said the placement rate for his students has dipped to about half from nearly 80 percent just three or four years ago.
"What's needed is the creation of new types of jobs to accept these people," he said. "Old-style industries can no longer guarantee a stable livelihood for Japanese."