Japan's employment growth has gone from 640,000 to nothing in four months, and the jobless rate fell anyway

Japan has stopped adding jobs.

The Statistics Bureau published the Labour Force Survey at half past eight on Friday morning in Tokyo, and it counts 68.50 million people in employment in July, which is the same figure as a year earlier, to the hundred thousand at which this survey reports its totals. In April the same measure was 640,000 higher than a year before, in May 520,000 higher, and in June 170,000 higher. The July column reads zero.

The unemployment rate went the other way. Seasonally adjusted it was 2.4 percent, a tenth of a point below June, with men at 2.6 percent and women at 2.1 percent. The number of people counted as unemployed was 1.69 million, also unchanged on the year.

Two things moved in opposite directions

Employees numbered 62.33 million, 360,000 more than a year earlier and a 53rd consecutive year on year increase. Self-employed people and family workers numbered 5.92 million, 270,000 fewer, a fall of 4.4 percent.

Those two components as printed do not sum to the printed total, which is ordinary in a survey that reports to the nearest ten thousand and does not classify every respondent, so the exact offset is not recoverable from the summary page. Neither direction is in doubt. Around it, the population aged 15 and over fell by 260,000 over the year, and the number of people outside the labour force fell by 240,000 to 39.24 million, a 53rd consecutive decline. The labour force itself, at 70.19 million, was unchanged.

Within employees, regular staff reached 37.36 million, up 160,000 and a 33rd consecutive increase, and non-regular staff reached 21.43 million, up 150,000. Non-regular workers were 36.5 percent of employees excluding executives, a tenth of a point higher than a year earlier. The categories inside that did not move together. Part-time workers rose 210,000 and dispatched staff 70,000, while arubaito, the survey's separate heading for casual work, fell 100,000 and contract staff fell 50,000.

The June signal did not repeat

June's release showed involuntary separations rising by 60,000 while separations recorded as voluntary fell by 40,000, a combination that had not appeared in any of the three months tabulated beside it. In July it reversed. Voluntary separations rose 50,000 to 760,000. Involuntary separations rose 20,000 to 410,000, and the subset attributed to the circumstances of an employer or a business rose 10,000 to 210,000. People newly looking for work fell 30,000 to 430,000.

By industry the largest gain was in living-related and personal services and amusement, at 2.39 million and up 130,000, followed by medical and welfare at 90,000 and transport and postal services at 80,000. Wholesale and retail trade lost 150,000 and agriculture and forestry 70,000. Manufacturing employed 10.26 million, 30,000 fewer than a year earlier, having been 390,000 higher on the same basis in June. Treat that as noise for now. A swing of 420,000 in a single month, in an industry breakdown drawn from a household sample, is a figure to watch across several months rather than one to read on its own.