once key to Abenomics, suffer as pandemic closes businesses
once key to Abenomics, suffer as pandemic closes businesses
On a
recent Saturday in Tokyo's Shinjuku district more than 100 people, many
of them elderly men, stood close together in a long queue waiting for
food hand-outs.To get more news about WikiFX, you can visit wikifx official website.
One of them, Tomoaki Kobayashi, said he was fearing the day he would
lose his home as his pension alone was not enough to pay the rent. Still
spry, the 72-year-old said he lost his job cleaning pachinko parlours
after many of the gambling halls were shut in a state of emergency
imposed because of the coronavirus.
“This is the final month. I
can't pay any longer,” Kobayashi said of his rent, clutching a small
sack of groceries - snacks, instant curry and hashed-beef rice that
would feed him for the next few days. He said he had paid pension
premiums for just 15 years, unlike the 33 years for most pensioners,
meaning he is eligible for only 54,000 yen ($500) every two months.
Elderly Japanese became an increasingly important part of the labour
pool after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe launched his “Abenomics” policies
in 2012 to revive the world's third-largest economy.
In a country
with the world's oldest population and lingering unease about
immigration, elderly workers fill roles as shop clerks, cleaners and
taxi drivers. For some, the work provides an additional boost to a
pension and considerable savings. But for lower-income workers like
Kobayashi, part-time jobs are a lifeline.
Now, the coronavirus has
shuttered shops and offices and left some of the most vulnerable
members of the labour force untethered, even as they are more at risk
from the disease than other age groups.
“Elderly who have to work
because of low pensions are facing tough conditions,” said Takanori
Fujita, who co-heads a network of non-profit workers, lawyers and
academics tackling social issues caused by the outbreak.
“We're holding consultations (with elderly) no longer able to pay their rent or electricity bills,” he said.
About 13% of the labour force are aged 65 or older, up from 9% when
Abe returned to power in 2012, according to government data. More than
three-quarters of elderly workers are non-regular employees, part-timers
and contract workers who are the first to lose their jobs when business
is under pressure.
“I think it's hard for them to start working
again if they lose their job once,” said Taro Saito, an executive
research fellow at NLI Research Institute.
The jobless rate hit a
one-year high of 2.5% in March, a rate that is the envy of many nations.
Still, an increase would further dampen demand and more elderly out of
work could put greater strain on social services as Japan braces for its
worst postwar economic slump.
“Japan isn't a country like the
United States where the unemployment rate rises and falls greatly,” said
Saito. “The negative impact is big even if it rises by just 1%.”
Nearly a fifth of elderly Japanese live in relative poverty, meaning
their income is less than half of the national median household income.
The average for over 65 across the Organisation for Economic Cooperation
and Development is just shy of 14%.
Single-person households that
consisted of unemployed people aged 60 and over in 2018 had on average
about 123,000 yen in real income per month, coming mostly from pensions.
Compared to their expenses, those households had a shortfall of about
38,000 yen a month, government data shows.
Tsuyoshi Gonda, 60,
applied for unemployment benefits after he was laid off from his
full-time job as a hairdresser in Tokyo's Katsushika area in mid-April.
That was not long after Abe called for the state of emergency because
of the coronavirus, urging people to avoid crowds and prompting many
businesses to shut.
“The number of customers dropped to zero a day
after the emergency was in place,” Gonda said. “It was a shop where
people decided to come on the day. It was very harsh.”
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